


jupiter at 3:33 a.m.

by deanpendragon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends, College, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24418354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanpendragon/pseuds/deanpendragon
Summary: Two years later, Yamaguchi still misses his best friend.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 138
Kudos: 530





	1. the perfect egg

“Your eggs look happier than you.”

The shells hit the bottom of the trash can with a soft smack and Oikawa turns on his heel. Yamaguchi stares down at the single piece of charred bacon, curved into a smile.

“You really don’t have to feed me,” he insists. “I just need your laptop.”

“Nonsense.” Oikawa cracks another egg into the hot pan and it sizzles through the tiny kitchen. He folds a paper towel over his fingertip and wipes a spot of grease from the countertop by the stove. He points at Yamaguchi. “Iwa-chan said if I prove I can take care of you, we can get a dog.”

“He didn’t say that.”

Oikawa gives him a wicked grin. “How do you know?”

“Because I _know._ Oikawa,” Yamaguchi whines, “can I just have the laptop?”

“Can you just eat _one_ egg?”

Yamaguchi does. He cuts it in two and the yolk runs over the plate. Oikawa beams.

“Look at that,” he marvels. “A perfect egg.”

Yamaguchi shrugs. “I think it needs some salt.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Yamaguchi laughs with his mouth full and Oikawa pulls the laptop from the countertop and sets it on the table in front of him. Yamaguchi eyes the volleyball sticker on the top, over the laptop’s logo. The colors on it have faded with time. The green looks more grey. The red has bled into the white.

“I had to erase the search history just for you, Tadashi.”

Yamaguchi sputters a laugh. “I feel so special.”

“You should,” Oikawa says, nodding. “You should also get your laptop fixed, finally. It’s been, like, eight months.”

“It’s been two weeks.”

“That’s practically eight months in student time. Don’t you have papers to write? Online quizzes to take? Lead singers of college bands profiles that you have to stalk?”

“That was one time. But I could use the library computers for all that stuff.”

“Or you can be an adult,” Oikawa counters when Yamaguchi huffs, “and go to the tech center at the library and have them look at it for free.”

Yamaguchi hums and cuts the round edges off his egg to make it a square. “It’s free?”

“It’s just a bunch of student geeks in a basement. Helpful geeks, though,” Oikawa tells him as he flips his last egg from the frying pan. He nudges it with the spatula until its in the very center of the plate. “What are you doing? Are you squaring off your egg?”

Yamaguchi doesn’t hear him, cataloging anything embarrassing on his busted laptop he wouldn’t want anyone to see in the unlikely event that they were to get it working again. He drags the half-moon pieces of egg white around his plate, smothering them with yolk. Oikawa waves a hand in front of his face. Yamaguchi huffs again.

“I wouldn’t need it if it weren’t for these interactive classroom things.” He traces the volleyball sticker on the laptop around and around with his finger as he talks. “I’m already sitting in the classroom surrounded by classmates, I don’t know why I also need to be online with them at the same time.”

“You’re just mad you had to wake up early to come here.”

“You’re probably right,” Yamaguchi sighs. He grins at Oikawa as he carefully zips the computer into his bag. “But I did get a delicious egg out of it. Oikawa, I seriously appreciate it.”

Flattered, Oikawa puts a hand on his chest.

“I’ll add more salt next time,” he promises wistfully.

“I meant I appreciate the _laptop_ ,” Yamaguchi says, but he grabs the burnt bacon smile as he leaves anyway.  


.....

  
Four weeks into his second year at Saikai and Yamaguchi has still only seen roughly fifteen percent of the campus: his dorm building, Yachi’s dorm building, two libraries, Oikawa’s student apartment, the three closest classroom buildings and the connecting sidewalks that take him there, grass and ivy forever pushing up through the cracked brick and concrete.  


Benches scatter across the grassy courtyard in front of the campus’s main library, a shallow dip with a koi pond sunk into its deepest point. A wreath of rocks encloses the pond and Yamaguchi always picks the bench closest to it because he likes the sound of the water, and because no one else ever does, even though the slope always sends his bag sliding to the ground.

One giant koi mouths at the surface of the water. His whiskers break the reflective sheet and slices the sun’s glare into dozens of little ripples. Yamaguchi watches the crescents of light skitter across the pond. The filter churns beneath the ground, but Yamaguchi only hears it when the chatter of nearby students dies down, whirring and clunking as three hundred gallons of clear water pass through. Gentle waves lick the rocks. Yamaguchi hears those, too. The pond cacophony appeals to something at the very back of his brain, where he stores things like the name of his first goldfish, the first street he lived on, the first valentine he got from a girl, and the sweet smell of lilacs that grew in the garden out back of his childhood home. The pond brings him home.

“Yamaguchi!”

The koi dives back under the water.

“I told you we’d find him here.”

Yachi hums in agreement. “Are your classes over?”

“Yachi and I are gonna go study at the library,” Hinata tells him. “Wanna come?”

“I can’t, sorry,” Yamaguchi tells them. “I’ve got to get Oikawa his laptop back before his class.” They frown, their bright hair backlit by the sun, just little halos of light. He adds, “I can come later, though.”

They perk up and Hinata tilts his head in thought.

“You know, Yamaguchi, you should bring your laptop when you meet us later. They just opened a technology center or something where they fix stuff like that.”

“Oh, yeah! I heard that,” chirps Yachi.

“Did everyone know about this but me?” Yamaguchi wonders.

Yachi grins, fond. She plucks Yamaguchi’s balled-up sweater from the spot next to him and sits, resting the sweater in her lap. Hinata drops his bag from his shoulder with a thud and sits at her side. Yamaguchi watches them watch the water for a minute. A small ripple kicks up a patch of sunlight and it slides across Yachi’s face.

“Aren’t you guys gonna study?” he asks.

“We can sit here for a minute,” Yachi answers, grinning.

Hinata kicks his feet back and forth across the grass, restless, but he doesn’t stand.

“Yeah,” he chimes in. “We can stay.”

The filter chugs in the quiet. A pond skater slides out gracefully from between the rocks. It skates a tiny diamond on the pond’s surface before it stills for just one second too long; the koi floats to the surface and gobbles it right up. The mighty fish swims in a merry, victorious circle, all scales of orange and white. Hinata cheers.  


.....  


  
Yamaguchi hasn’t been online in two weeks. Oikawa laughs when he tells him so.

“That is such a lie. You go on your phone—that counts. You have five more minutes before I have to go in, by the way.”

“The phone is _different,_ ” Yamaguchi insists.

Oikawa rests his chin in his hand dramatically. “The youth and their social media…”

“Yeah, right. You’re on here far more than I am, Oikawa.” He turns the laptop around so Oikawa can see the screen as he scrolls down his timeline. He counts, “There you are once. Twice. Oh! There you are again. Many, many Oikawas.”

Oikawa drops his smile. “Whoa. That’s a throwback.”

“What?” asks Yamaguchi, turning the laptop back to himself. “Oh.”

His fingers hover over the trackpad. His head falls to the side, suddenly top-heavy.

“Two years ago today,” he reads on the screen. “Huh.”

Bloated memories balloon in his brain. He sinks into the plastic chair, and he swears he feels the legs of it break through the tile beneath, right down to the building’s foundation. Yamaguchi lets all the air out before his skull starts to crack. Oikawa pulls the laptop from him with a gentle tug.

“Five minutes is up,” he tells him.

“Oh. Right.”

Oikawa slaps him on the shoulder and tucks his laptop under his arm. His classmates begin to swarm into the nearest classroom. He joins them.

“Shake it off, Tadashi. I’ll see you later.”

Yamaguchi stands up. Quickly, he scans the floor beneath the chair he occupied for any cracks.

“Okay, yeah,” he answers, finding none. “Oh—wait! Oikawa! I didn’t log out!”

“Didn’t you?” Oikawa wonders.

“Don’t do anything unsavory on my account!”

“Oh, Tadashi,” he calls over his shoulder. “You know me so well.”  


.....

  
Behind Saikai’s gymnasium rots a forgotten cement court, poured and shaped and then abandoned before they could paint proper lines on it. The basketball net is a broken chain, wound up in the cracked, rusty rim. Patches of grass shoot through the cracks beneath Yamaguchi’s feet, brittle and brown because the massive gymnasium hogs all the sunlight.

Yamaguchi bounces a volleyball off the creaky backboard. The chain rim rattles.

Yamaguchi feels Tsukishima when he plays volleyball, inherently. It tunes him into the frequency they occupied in grade school, in middle school, through almost all of high school, like they both turned to the same static radio station at the same time and, through the crackle, heard each other instead. He doesn’t play like he used to. Yamaguchi doesn’t play like he used to, but he can’t stand the thought of setting the ball down one day and never picking it up again. 

The backboard jostles when he nails it with a serve. A small fire of pride ignites inside him. He holds the ball under his arm and slouches against the gymnasium wall. Hinata practices on the other side. He spikes and jumps and rallies and cheers and wins and wins and wins and, if he tried, Yamaguchi knows he could be right there with him. 

He wonders how it would have been if Tsukishima would have seen him become captain in his third year—if Tsukishima would have stayed, if Tsukishima would have grown, if Tsukishima would have let him take more pictures—if _two years ago today_ was instead _yesterday._ Yamaguchi wonders just how weak he would have stayed if he hadn’t had to rebuild his life from the ground up.

He glances at the sharp top of a skyscraper in the distance.

On the very edge of campus is a cluster of high rises and transport stations where the lights never go out. Oikawa’s is close by, and if he listens real hard at night, he hears the trains grinding the track. For the first time in a long time, Yamaguchi wonders how the trains sound in Tsukishima’s city, and if they ever run here and there at the same exact times, and how maybe the rustling of the earth synced up beneath both their feet, even just for a moment, and neither of them even knew it.  


.....

  
“Why is it called biting down?” Hinata asks from the top bunk. Yamaguchi hears little clacking sounds as he bites the air. “Shouldn’t it be called biting up?”

“Hinata, you should probably go to bed.”

“But I’m not tired.”

The mattress squeaks beneath him as Yamaguchi sits up on his elbows.

“You had a _two-hour_ practice,” he insists.

“Yeah…” Hinata trails off. He clacks at the air some more.

Yamaguchi lies back down. He forgets what it means to feel tired from something real, from something that gets his heart going and his blood pumping, zagging through his veins, each molecule of oxygen racing the last. Instead, he’s tired from his classes, tired from studying, tired from the winding stairs he climbs as Yachi drags him around the library. He doesn’t even have the excuse of excellent grades like she does, with her color-coded notes and club memberships and supplementary textbooks. He’s just tired.

“I’m tired,” Yamaguchi says aloud.

“Your top jaw never even moves,” Hinata muses. “Biting up. _Up_.”

“Hinata.”

“Sorry. I’ll shut up so you can get some sleep.”

Yamaguchi drapes his forearm over his eyes. “It’s not even that. It’s like I’m tired but I have no reason to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“All I do is school. I don’t have sports like you, and I don’t have clubs like Yachi.”

Hinata rolls over and pops his head over the side of the bunk to stare down at him.

“I have an idea. Wait, are you okay, Yamaguchi?” he asks suddenly.

It’s so genuine that Yamaguchi wants to hide his face.

“I saw a picture of Tsukki and I today,” he answers.

The strain in his voice gives him away and Yamaguchi’s jaw wobbles. For only a moment, something crawls down through the tightness of his throat and scrabbles at his chest. It then drops, lead-like, into his stomach and all at once Yamaguchi expels it. Just like that, it’s gone. It stays shorter and shorter each time it returns, and each time is a small victory.

“Oh,” Hinata mutters, and though Yamaguchi can’t see his face, he can imagine it.

Moments pass. There’s a muffled shout from the next dorm room over.

Yamaguchi wonders, “What was your idea?”

“Oh, right. My idea,” Hinata parrots, picking up steam again. “You should join a club, Yamaguchi. There’s, like, a billion at this school anyway. There ought to be dozens you’d like.”

Just the thought of joining a club makes Yamaguchi want to bury his head in his pillow and sleep for days. He bites the inside of his cheek. Maybe it’s exactly what he needs. He tells Hinata so and he hums his agreement, but Yamaguchi doesn’t hear his follow-up as he rummages around the clutter on the floor next to his bed for his phone. He brings it to his face and blinks at the harsh light.

“You’re gonna look now?” Hinata asks, still upside down.

Yamaguchi doesn’t tell Hinata that if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t do it at all.

“Isn’t all the blood rushing to your head?” he laughs. “You should lie back down.”

The school website burns its signature green and gold into his eyes. He scrolls the club list, and from _Agriculture_ all the way to _Zoology,_ nothing catches his attention. He starts from the top again, and again, and once more until he has to press his fingertips into his tired eyes, stung from the light.

“There are so _many_. How do people even choose?”

Hinata hums. “I think most people see flyers around campus. I have another idea.”

“What?” Yamaguchi wonders, clicking his phone off.

“Close your eyes, and whichever one you stop scrolling on, that’s the one you’ll attend.”

He frowns. “What if I pick something lame?”

“Just take a chance, Yamaguchi. What’s the harm in that?”

Nothing, he guesses.

“Nothing, I guess,” Yamaguchi decides.

He picks his phone up once more. He takes a breath and stares up at the bottom of Hinata’s mattress. It warps as Hinata finally lies down. The metal wires dig into the rubber mattress cover and Yamaguchi scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. He counts up and then down from ten. He takes a breath and stops scrolling.

“ _Astronomy,_ ” he reads.

“That’s perfect!” Hinata crows.

“It is?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you have a NASA poster in your room?”

Yamaguchi huffs a laugh. “When I was, like, sixteen.”

“I think that’s a sign,” Hinata enthuses, his last words warbled through a yawn.

Yamaguchi rests his phone on his chest and stares up into the dark. He likes space enough, he likes the moon, he likes stars, and he likes when the closest planets glow just enough that their immenseness breaks through trillions of lightyears of icy blackness, just pinpoints of light and trickles of colors cast so far off that sometimes Yamaguchi forgets they ever even glow at all.


	2. begin again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: mentions of **past** yamaguchi/yachi moving forward.

The southwest corner of campus is blocked off by rickety chainlink fences and tarps that enclose a hoard of dusty bulldozers. Yamaguchi never actually sees them work, but he does see their progress each morning as he passes, like the workers dig themselves out from the rubble and set to work once it gets dark and tuck themselves beneath the gravel again with the morning sun.

“Like little construction elves,” he mentions to Akaashi.

Akaashi grants him a placid stare. “I don’t think elves are nocturnal.”

“You know what I mean.” Yamaguchi kicks a jagged bit of concrete that has escaped the construction fence and it skitters across the sidewalk. He hoists the strap of his school bag higher on his shoulder. “I think I’ll join the Astronomy Club.”

“I think that would be great, Yamaguchi.”

“Yeah?”

Akaashi nods. “I’ve been suggesting that you do something since the fall.”

“I do things,” Yamaguchi insists.

“I meant things you can put on a resume.”

“Thanks for helping me out and all, Akaashi, but I doubt NASA is going to bring out the champagne if they see ‘attended Astronomy Club in sophomore year’ on my resume. _”_

“You shouldn’t minimize it. Being captain of the volleyball team in high school helped toward my Resident Assistant position as an upperclassman this year because it shows that I have experience in leadership.”

“Oh, I’m sure _that’s_ why they wanted you as an RA,” Yamaguchi quips, and his tone alone makes Akaashi roll his eyes prematurely. “It couldn’t be because of your grades or volunteering or one of your three scholarships, nope. It has to be that—it must be the volleyball.”

“Don’t forget that you fall under that category, too. Besides, it’s not exactly about the content of the group. It’s more than that. It’s about letting employers know that you have initiative and a desire to learn,” Akaashi insists, gesturing with his free hand as he talks, “and that you have experience working with a group. There are lots of benefits to clubs and organizations on your resume, Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi suddenly feels very small; a mere comma on one of Akaashi’s long, tumbling lists.

“Can we not talk about my _desire to learn_ —”

“Or lack thereof.”

“—before ten in the morning? I haven’t even had any coffee yet.”

Akaashi taps his finger on the lid of the warm cup in Yamaguchi’s hand, identical to his own.

“Drink up, then,” he orders.

He doesn’t even let Yamaguchi stop by the koi pond before he drags him to into the library. Yamaguchi’s eyes trace the enormous pillars that encircle the lobby, the reading cove at its center where students sit in cheap armchairs, bogged down by their books. Akaashi leads him to the basement floor. He smiles politely at other students he knows from their dorm that Yamaguchi doesn’t recognize. He really should pay more attention. 

The basement floor is dark—the quiet, studious atmosphere more concentrated without the distraction of pillars and lobby whispers and enormous arching windows. The grey carpet soaks up most of the sound, but it can’t catch the clicks of keyboards. Rows of computers extend out from the back wall. They curve around the entrance to an extension Yamaguchi hasn’t seen before, a circular reception desk guarding its glass doors, one of two of them left ajar. Muffled voices carry from inside.

“What is that?” Yamaguchi whispers.

“The technology hub,” Akaashi answers. “It was built over the summer.”

“Wow.”

He turns to Yamaguchi, one impeccable eyebrow raised. “Are you meaning to tell me you have not been to this library since the semester started?”

Yamaguchi loops his bag on the chair farthest from the center’s entrance and sits. He positions his hands over the keyboard. He clears his throat, feeling like a kid whose parent just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. Yamaguchi ignores his sudden sweet tooth.

“I just haven’t been to the basement,” he answers. “How do I log in again?”

Akaashi’s disapproval wafts off him like bad cologne. Yamaguchi leans out of his way and thinks he makes a perfect RA; he is equal parts understanding and resolute, without all the arts and crafts welcome-wagon bullshit. Yamaguchi picks at a loose thread on his chair as Akaashi sets up a document. He looks around at the other computer chairs, each one missing one aspect or another to make a complete entity; the next chair has half an armrest, the one after that lacks a height lever, and the one on the end of the row sports an impeccably circular hole in its back, right through the mesh. Yamaguchi guesses they blew the entire budget on the columns in the lobby.

“And the tech center,” Akaashi adds. “They bought a dozen new, state of the art computers.”

Yamaguchi tries to spy through the glass windows. Akaashi follows his stare.

“I bet they’re insane,” Yamaguchi says, turning back.

The document on the screen is startlingly blank. Yamaguchi tries to picture it completely filled in with his meager accomplishments, with his limited education, with his short summer jobs at supermarkets back home. He types his name at the top.

“Yamaguchi,” Akaashi says just as he types it. “May I ask you something?”

“What’s up?” Yamaguchi answers. He types his name a second, third, and fourth time just to get rid of the blank space.

“Have you spoken to Tsukishima?”

Yamaguchi stops typing for a moment.

“Uh,” he struggles. “No?” He looks up at Akaashi, but he still stares over his shoulder. Yamaguchi looks back to the computer screen, his pointer finger tapping the backspace. He lets the sheet of bright white burn his eyes. “Why?”

“I’m sorry if that was abrupt. I just thought you might have.”

“No,” Yamaguchi repeats.

“Would you?” he asks, quiet.

Yamaguchi feels Akaashi turn back to him. He feels his eyes at his back. The document is blank, but Yamaguchi taps the backspace key anyway. The cursor line flashes chaotically in the top left corner.

“I don’t think he would,” Yamaguchi decides.

“Okay then,” Akaashi says finally, distracting Yamaguchi from himself. “Let’s get your resume in order."

…..

Yamaguchi tugs at the paper label of a beer bottle and watches the same green light dance up and down the window drapes. His eyes follow as it jitters over the blinds, waltzes across the wall, foxtrots on the carpet. It vanishes for a moment, mobbed by blue and red lights, then reappears on Yachi’s swaying skirt. Yamaguchi looks down. He peels the paper label further from the bottle in hand, made warm by his palm. The piece rips from the glass and leaves spikes of paper behind. He crumbles what he’s got in his fist.

“What’s up?” Hinata chirps over the music. “Whoops. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He flops onto the couch next to him, his body warm as it presses to Yamaguchi’s side. Strands of orange hair stick to the sweat on his forehead.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I can never get the whole thing off in one piece,” Yamaguchi tells him.

“What?”

“The label,” Yamaguchi calls, opening his hand to show him. “I can never rip the whole thing off at once.”

Hinata watches with glazed eyes as the plastic unfurls on Yamaguchi’s palm.

“Sounds like you need another beer, Yamaguchi.”

“I’m okay.”

“I’ll get you one!”

Hinata vanishes through the thinning clusters of students. Bass bumps through the tiny apartment. Yachi curls her hand around the forearm of the guy she dances with, her grin easy and wide. He jokes with her, she jokes back. The green light dances on her knee before it zips away, zigzagging up the wall behind them.

“Is it weird,” Hinata starts, back at his side again, “seeing Yachi with other guys?”

Yamaguchi takes the bottle Hinata pesters him with and shakes his head.

“No. Should it be?”

“I don’t know. Should it?”

“I don’t know,” Yamaguchi parrots.

He leaves Hinata on the couch to find a bottle opener. He winds his way to Oikawa’s kitchen to see its owner leaning against it, his phone pulled to his face. It casts a rectangle of blue light on his face in the near-darkness. Oikawa groans when Yamaguchi flips the kitchen light on.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking my grades.”

Yamaguchi looks around. “This is _your_ party.”

“Not a party, a get-together.”

“Is that what you told Iwaizumi?”

“Yep,” Oikawa replies, phone clicking as he types.

“Can you drink this?”

Oikawa keeps his eyes on his phone. He grabs the bottle Yamaguchi holds out to him after he snaps it open. Yamaguchi cocks his head and watches the contents of the bottle splash against the bottom of the bottle, then the middle, then the neck, until Oikawa pulls it from his mouth with a sigh. He hands the empty bottle back to Yamaguchi blindly.

“A ninety?!” he howls. “That paper was a _ninety-five_ if anything.”

Yamaguchi hums and holds the bottle under the kitchen faucet, filling it to the top.

“You should contact the dean about that one,” he says.

“Maybe I will,” Oikawa retorts.

Yamaguchi takes a swig of water and sighs.

“I should probably go home. I have tests tomorrow.”

“You know, Yamaguchi, maybe if you actually drank a beer, you’d be just a little less uptight,” Oikawa says, holding his index finger and thumb a millimeter apart. “Just a little.”

“You can’t call _me_ uptight when the one checking grades at your own par— _get-together_.”

Oikawa cracks open another bottle. “Damn straight. Education is important.”

Yamaguchi groans, “Trust me, I get it. I’ve been with Akaashi for the last week straight.”

“Akaashi’s lovely,” Oikawa defends.

“He is, he totally is. But there is only so much fluff we can add to my resume to make me look like an actual, reputable human being before it all starts to read like one big pile of nothing.”

Oikawa frowns. He slides across the kitchen and slings an arm around Yamaguchi’s neck, beer sloshing from the bottle as he gestures pointedly at him.

“Stop that. You are the most reputable human being I know,” he ensures.

“No.”

“Yes. Shut up.”

“I can’t.”

“His boyfriend was on the cover of _College Volleyball_ this month, you know.”

“What? Who?”

“Bokuto,” Oikawa says.

They both crane their necks when sudden applause erupts from the living room. People cheer as a well-known song cranks through the apartment.

“Who’s Bokuto’s boyfriend?” asks Yamaguchi, and Oikawa rolls his eyes.

“No, I mean Bokuto was. Fukurodani’s Bokuto. Remember him?”

“Wait a sec,” Yamaguchi stops him. He cocks his head. “They’re _dating_?”

Oikawa barks a laugh. “You didn’t know?”

“No! Akaashi doesn’t talk about it! For how long?”

“Like, since the end of high school?” he guesses.

Yamaguchi gapes. “Longer than you and Iwaizumi?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Oikawa laughs some more and clinks his bottle against Yamaguchi’s before he takes a drink. “I think people fuck a lot more than you realize, Tadashi.”

“Why’d you have to say it like that?”

“I’m just saying it like it is. Now get out of here so I can see if Nakamura has graded my online quiz yet.”

Oikawa pushes him toward the living room with a hand on his back. Yamaguchi flips the light off on his way out.

Plastic cups are stacked nicely on end tables, even on top of coasters, any spills wicked away by sleeves or paper towels. Yamaguchi only sees such orderly parties at Oikawa’s. Intimidation is key, Oikawa tells him, and Yamaguchi believes it. It makes him think of the first few years Oikawa was in his life, across shiny gym courts, standing behind the very same line Yamaguchi did, just on the opposite side. His presence is palpable, still. Anywhere he goes, Oikawa radiates. Yamaguchi is endlessly proud to call him his friend.

The light projector shines on in the living room, but even it seems to move drowsily through the space, much like the people who occupy it. The couch has been taken—Yachi and her friend, with another guy next to him, half-asleep with his head tipped onto the arm of the couch. His foot still taps to the music, and Yamaguchi doesn’t know why, but it makes him grin.

Hinata buzzes to his side. “Should we save her?”

Yamaguchi turns back to Yachi, sitting with the dark-haired guy on Oikawa’s couch. Yamaguchi checks her hands. For a moment as brief as a flash of green light, her bright eyes meet his. She makes her thumb and index finger into a circle atop her knee, her other fingers flared outward. The grin she gives him carries back to the guy next to her, but Yamaguchi knows it’s his. Something fond and deep-rooted twinges in his chest.

“She’s okay,” he replies finally.

…..

Yamaguchi files out information for two tests, three quizzes, and four chapters of reading as he leaves his classroom building for the day. He imagines himself squeezing his brain like a sponge, wringing every irrelevant thing out, then dragging it behind him on his walk home like a disobedient puppy. He steps over the giant crack in the sidewalk out front of his dorm, slowly becoming a chasm. He needs a nap. The pairs of shoes outside his room tell him he won’t get one.

Hinata and Yachi sit on the top bunk, their voices hushed. He glances at the cards in their hands.

“What’s up? he says. “Why are you whispering about Uno?”

“Uh—because! Because my cards are really good.”

“You’re not supposed to tell her that,” Yamaguchi tells Hinata.

Yamaguchi tosses his bag on the chair by the door. Yachi places her cards face down on the bed and turns her body to face him. Hinata mirrors her and Yamaguchi looks between them, stopping in his tracks.

“What’s that face for?” Yamaguchi asks wearily.

“What face?” Hinata asks. “I’m not doing a face.”

“Last time I saw that face, you broke your ant farm and pushed it under my bed.” Yamaguchi ducks to look quickly under his bunk. “What have you done now, Hinata?”

“I haven’t—”

“ _Where are the ants?”_

“Relax, Yamaguchi, there aren’t any ants,” Yachi swears. “At least, I don’t think so. I think I would’ve felt them crawling on me by now, I mean, if ants can crawl up here. They probably can, I’m pretty sure they can crawl up any surfaces. Which means they can—”

“Yachi, oh my god.”

She shakes her head to clear it, blond hair swatting her cheeks.

“Sorry, sorry. No, this isn’t about ants. Um, Yamaguchi—how’s your laptop?”

“We think you should get it fixed,” blurts Hinata. “Like, today.”

“Hinata, who cares about my laptop, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! I’m getting seriously concerned here,” Yamaguchi tells them, stepping up the ladder to press the back of his hand to Hinata’s forehead.

“He’s right, Yamaguchi. You should really get your laptop looked at.”

“At that tech center in the library,” Hinata adds.

“The new add-on in the basement?” asks Yamaguchi, picturing its glass doors and circle desk.

“Yeah, that’s the place.”

“I think you’ll only have to pay if there’s serious damage,” says Yachi.

Behind Yamaguchi, the dorm room door he left ajar is gently pushed further open. Akaashi taps his knuckles on the door and peeks his head in.

“Yamaguchi, have you had your laptop looked at yet?”

“What is this, an intervention?”

He opens the door for Akaashi and looks around at each of them. He takes a deep breath.

“Guys, I’m touched by your concern for my laptop, but I could really use a nap,” he tells them.

Yachi and Hinata stare at him, wide-eyed. He spins around. Akaashi’s placid stare is firm and unwavering, all cool and grey and flat like cement, and Yamaguchi knows what that means. He grabs his busted laptop from beneath the desk. He shoves it in his book bag and slings it over his shoulder, his tired muscles protesting its weight. Yamaguchi gives his bed one last longing look and, after an approving nod, Akaashi ushers him out the door.

…..

The library is packed with students free from their classes. Yamaguchi laments the fact that he’s one of them.

When he looks around, all but two of the computers in the basement are occupied. Maybe he actually does need his laptop fixed. Yamaguchi eyes the crowd around the circle desk, thinning with each name that’s called. Yamaguchi teeters in place. He quickly pulls out his laptop one last time at a nearby table to make sure he hadn’t missed anything stupid or obvious, scanning for any easy fixes he’s overlooked in the past couple weeks, but there’s nothing. As a last resort, he furiously taps the power button.

Nothing. He sighs at himself in the solid black screen. In the reflection, he watches the circle desk finally clear out. Over his shoulder, a face becomes clear. Yamaguchi holds his breath.

“Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi has imaged it a thousand times. He has imagined meeting in a coffee shop by chance in their thirties. He has imagined getting a phone call one day from a familiar number that soon becomes the most dialed in his phone. He has imagined traveling abroad someday and meeting under one of the bright buildings, all lit up under the night sky, ducking under the same awning for shelter from sudden rain. He has imagined being back home, passing the high school, passing the markets, passing his house, meeting by the crooked mailbox like they’re nine again. 

He watches Tsukishima’s face on the screen. He turns around. Finally, he exhales.

“Tsukki?”

“Hey,” Tsukishima says.

_Hey._ Yamaguchi gathers his laptop from the table and in the seven steps he takes to the circle desk where Tsukishima stands, he tries to decide how in the fuck he should feel but nothing clear-cut pushes to the surface, nothing makes itself obvious, and instead his heart punches against his ribcage, so hard it hurts. Yamaguchi’s vision wobbles from the strength of it.

“What are you doing here?”

Tsukishima blinks, his eyes bright without any glasses to hinder them. “I work here.”

“No, I mean, _here_ ,” Yamaguchi tries again, “at this school—in this _country_. Why are you in the country?”

“I moved back,” Tsukishima answers easily.

“Oh.”

“Just before the semester began.”

“Oh."

“Yeah. Hey,” he says again.

Yamaguchi jumps when another name is called from the other side of the desk. Tsukishima pulls the laptop across the counter.

“Is this broken?” he asks.

“Uh—yeah. It won’t turn on.”

“Let me see.”

Tsukishima opens the screen gently and pokes at specific keys, pressing some and holding others down. They are ten again and Tsukishima is fixing the gameboy Yamaguchi’s cousin dropped in the toilet.

“I’ll have to keep it for a while. We might have to send it off to get it fixed,” Tsukishima tells him. Yamaguchi nods, distracted by the crowd of students gathering at his back. Tsukishima scrawls a line of numbers on a slip of paper and pushes it across the desk. “Keep that. I’ll have more information later in the week.”

“I have to come back?”

“Well, I certainly don’t want this,” he retorts, looking disdainfully at Yamaguchi’s laptop.

Yamaguchi can’t gather a grin to meet Tsukishima’s smirk, so he just stares. Students push closer behind him—he hears the clicks of phone keyboards, the pulling of zippers, the smacking of gum. He scribbles his student ID on a blue slip when Tsukishima asks him to and leaves it on the keyboard.

“I, uh—I've gotta go,” Yamaguchi stammers.

Tsukishima blinks owlishly down at him. Yamaguchi has to look higher to meet his eyes, now.

“Oh,” says Tsukishima. “Okay.”

“Okay. Yeah, um. It was nice seeing you again.”

Yamaguchi spins on his heel so fast he gets dizzy. Already three steps away, he presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. He almost runs into two different pillars in the lobby, and his heart takes the entire walk home to climb down from his throat.


	3. five sheets of star stickers

“Oh my god,” Yamaguchi repeats, “oh my _god_.”

Yachi rests a hand on his knee and says something comforting—Yamaguchi recognizes her tone—but he can’t hear her as he drowns in his own self-pity, angry waves lapping at his ears. He leans against the white concrete wall, the ugly shag rug Hinata insisting on bringing from home beneath him. He digs his fingers into it. He looks over to where Oikawa lounges on his bed.

“You are way too calm,” he accuses.

“You are way too freaked out,” Oikawa counters flippantly, crossing his legs at the ankle.

Yamaguchi pinpoints Hinata where he sits across the room. Under his scrutiny, Hinata flinches.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” he groans. “Why’d you have to make me go see him?”  


“It was Yachi’s idea!”

Yachi rolls her eyes. She turns to Yamaguchi and sighs.

“I’m sorry we caught you off guard, Yamaguchi. I just think it’s important that you see him for yourself.”

“Why?”

“Closure?” Oikawa guesses, and Yachi nods.

The word is too big to fit in the room. It inflates and inflates, pushing the tiny window outward, the wooden frames of the bunk beds creaking from the pressure. Yamaguchi makes room for it, bringing his knees to his chest. He grabs at the rug again as if to feel the word in his hands, to hold it and measure its gravity. Yamaguchi thinks of the way Tsukishima’s stare pinned him to where he stood like a butterfly on white paper. He thinks of how it always did that. He wonders how great the gravity of Tsukishima’s focus must really be if it has held strong even after two years of absence.

Yamaguchi stretches his legs out in front of him again. He pops the thought with one of the pins that holds him down and watches it whirl around the room before it slips out the window it shattered. His friends don’t notice at all.

“He got taller,” Yamaguchi mentions, and ropes his voice back in when it sounds faraway.

Yachi and Hinata share a look. Oikawa puffs a breath that blows his bangs off his forehead.

“What’d you guys talk about, anyway? _Hey, Yamaguchi, I know I’ve blown you off for two years and been a major dick, but how are your classes going_?”

“No,” Yamaguchi says miserably. “Nothing really. He’s fixing my computer. Or sending it somewhere, I don’t know.”

“That—that’s it?!” Hinata squawks, scooting closer.

“That’s it. Except,” Yamaguchi stops to throw his hands over his face, burning red. “ _Nice seeing you again_. Oh my god, I said that— _nice seeing you again_. That’s what I told him.”

Oikawa laughs, “What is he, your estranged aunt?”

“What is wrong with me,” Yamaguchi gargles into his palms.

Yachi pries his hands away from his face and gives him as stern of a look as her soft, pretty face can manage. Yamaguchi stops groaning and listens.

“Nothing is wrong with you. You were just nervous.”

“You don’t understand, Yachi. It was more than nervous, it was like—it was like seeing a ghost.”

“A major dick of a ghost,” Oikawa chimes in.

Yachi glares at him. “Can you at least try to be helpful?”

Oikawa squints back at her and contemplates. Amused, Hinata and Yamaguchi look back and forth between them. Their stand-off distracts Yamaguchi for approximately twelve seconds before everything crashes back down and the fist is back again, clenching tight in his chest. Oikawa clears his throat.

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, Yamaguchi,” he tries instead, earning himself an approving nod.

Soft knuckles bump against the dorm room door. Yamaguchi knows that knock.

“Akaashi, I can’t work on my resume today, I’m sorry,” he calls.

Akaashi pushes the door ajar and, surprised at the number of people inside, gives them all a quick nod. His stare falls on Yamaguchi.

“That’s okay. I was actually wondering what time your club was tomorrow.”

“Oh. Let me check.”

Yamaguchi fishes his phone out of his pocket. Students pass behind Akaashi in the dorm hallway, tinny music ringing from their phones. Yamaguchi’s bed squeaks as Oikawa sits up. He leans against the frame of it and crosses his arms.

“You’re an awfully involved RA, Akaashi-chan,” he teases.

“Thank you, Oikawa-san,” Akaashi replies flatly.

“Wait,” says Yamaguchi, furrowing his brow. “That can’t be right.”

Hinata leans over his shoulder. “Wait, what?”

“It says three-thirty a.m.—they mean p.m., right, Akaashi?”

“Can I see?”

Akaashi takes Yamaguchi’s phone for a moment, but his face doesn’t give anything away.

“It’s at night,” he decides finally.

“You mean morning,” Oikawa snickers.

Yamaguchi gapes. “No way. No way it’s at night! How do kids pull that off?”

“Late classes?” Yachi guesses. “Still, though…I suppose it is an astronomy club, right?”

“Maybe I can email whoever runs it, and tell them I’m choosing another—”

“I think it’s important to stick with the commitment you’ve made, Yamaguchi. You have late classes, right?” Akaashi ponders gently, handing his phone back. “Besides, you are interested in the subject matter, aren’t you?”

Yamaguchi shrugs and pockets his phone. “I guess.”

“At least give it a shot,” Hinata chimes in. “How many people get to see the stars at that time, anyway?”

Yamaguchi never sees stars, and when he should, he’s busy piggybacking Hinata home from a crowded apartment or walking home from Oikawa’s with his eyes glued to his phone. He imagines the campus blacked out in the dead of night, a bowl of stars scooping his attention upwards.

.....

Akaashi Keiji can be quite motivational, but when Yamaguchi’s phone alarm buzzes to life in his palm at three in the morning, he has half a mind to drag himself down the hall in a cocoon of blankets and wake his ass up, too. Yamaguchi glares at his phone in betrayal. He feels for his clothes in the dark so he won’t wake Hinata. He hears him breathing as he ties his shoes—in for four, out for six—in his deep sleep. Yamaguchi stuffs down his envy.

Perpetual light from the hallway bleeds under the door, and it’s how Yamaguchi finds his way out.

Just like the students, the campus snoozes. No buses, no kiosks, no staff zooming down the sidewalks on electric maintenance carts. Classroom buildings hunch over in their sleep. Only the light posts stay alert, beaming circles of yellow light over grass and concrete. Yamaguchi listens hard for the night elves but even the construction site is silent.

The club meets in the only lit building on campus twenty-four-seven: the student center. Yamaguchi remembers taking his student ID photo in the lobby, picking up his dorm registration papers in the basement, meeting his tour group out front for the first walk of the campus after he graduated high school with Hinata and Yachi by his side. Even the usually bustling student center looks gloomy in the twilight. Yamaguchi wants to shut its lights off too so it can finally get some rest. He glances at the tiny yellow light on the keypad by the door and feels for his ID in his pocket.

His stomach drops into his feet.

“ _Shit_ ,” he groans.

He squints through the glass into the half-lit student center lobby. He raps his knuckles against the glass but there’s no movement inside, the other club members probably tucked away in one of the side rooms. If he walks back to his dorm to get his ID, Yamaguchi knows he’ll take one look at his bed and fall in. He would probably miss the meeting, anyway. He tosses one last pathetic glance at the card swipe machine and its little yellow light and groans. He knocks again, weaker this time. He knocks until his knuckles hurt.

“Are you locked out?”

Yamaguchi jumps out of his skin. He whips around to see Tsukishima.

“Tsukki? What—what are you _doing_ here?”

Tsukishima holds his ID to the keypad. Yamaguchi watches the little yellow light blip to green and behind him, the door buzzes and unlocks. His tired heart twitches in his chest and he thinks about all the occurrences and instances in his life—in both their lives—and all the odds and statistics in the world that could have possibly stacked up to this moment with Tsukishima, on the brick landing of a college student center at three-thirty a.m. on a Tuesday, gathering to learn about the planets and the stars.

“Club,” Tsukishima says.

Yamaguchi blinks at him in the low light. “Club?”

“Yeah. Can you push the door open before it locks again?”

“ _You’re_ in the Astronomy Club, too?” Yamaguchi goes on. “ _You_?”

“Apparently. I’m tired, though, so I don’t know if I’ll come again,” Tsukishima answers, yawning into his fist. Yamaguchi stares until Tsukishima gestures behind him. “Yamaguchi, the door.”

“Oh, right.”

Tentatively, Yamaguchi pushes the door open. He feels Tsukishima looming at his back as they follow the signs that point to one of the first-floor classrooms, bright light spilling through the glass rectangle in the door.

“I guess this is it,” Tsukishima says.

“Guess so.”

Tsukishima hums in response, a sleepy, droning hum, and its like the light on the tile floor crawls up Yamaguchi’s leg and into his chest. He snuffs out the warmth when it starts to burn.

Four other students sit at the long wooden table in front of the chalkboard, each of them looking sleepier than the next. The girl at the end warms her hands on a cup of coffee. Steam floats from the small hole in the lid. Yamaguchi sits in the empty chair next to her.  There’s a split second where Yamaguchi thinks Tsukishima won’t sit by him, will scan the room for options, will walk to the next table instead. But he doesn’t. He sits right at Yamaguchi’s side, and Yamaguchi occupies himself with the strings of his hoodie. He pulls the left to be the same length as the right and then yanks the right one back down again when he accidentally pulls it too high.

The instructor leans against the desk at the front of the room, more alert than the rest of them. Her eyes are tired but bright, pleased even with the meager turnout. She starts her spiel.

Six weeks. For six weeks, the pairs watch their assigned planet twice a week and map it out on a grid, noting its brightness and the characteristics of the space around it. On the sixth week, each group presents their grid along with a massive collection of information on their particular planet. Yamaguchi presses his palm to the handout they were given, still warm from the printer. He’s had this same assignment a dozen times through school, but never for a club. Next to him, Tsukishima stifles a yawn. Yamaguchi knows by the stiffness in his shoulders.

On the line after _Preferred planet,_ Yamaguchi writes Jupiter: the king of all planets.

The instructor curls her cropped black hair behind her ear. “Wow, three of you picked Saturn. Is it the rings?” she wonders, looking up from her paper. “You three can be together, then. Next up is Mercury, and it’s the only one.” Mercury kid gingerly raises his hand. “I can work with you then, since Mercury was the only planet picked once. Okay?”

He nods, a blush creeping into his cheeks. The instructor grins at him before she turns to Yamaguchi.

“That means you two will work together. Jupiter, right?” she confirms.

Yamaguchi’s heart hammers in his chest. When he turns to Tsukishima, he’s already staring back.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says for them.

The instructor starts up again, giving more direction and placing packets on the desk in front of them, but Yamaguchi isn’t listening.

“You picked Jupiter?” he whispers.

Shuffling his papers into a neat stack, Tsukishima nods.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “King of all planets.”

Yamaguchi stares at him for another moment, his eyes still unmarred by glasses. Yamaguchi won’t get used to that. He sinks into his chair and bears the heavy cauldron in his gut right now, stirring around and around until he’s sick to his stomach. Yamaguchi figures he can deal with that, as long as it stays in his stomach and not all over the desk in front of him.

.....

“Do they even have stars in France?” Yamaguchi jokes.

Tsukishima doesn’t hear him, focused on the papers in his hand as they cross the courtyard. His phone flashlight beams over the pages. Yamaguchi drags his feet through the grass just to hear the rustle.

“All we have to do tonight is choose a viewing point,” Tsukishima reads, making Yamaguchi step closer to hear him. “Somewhere equidistant from you and me.”

When Yamaguchi was young, his parents kept a tiny blue notebook of neighbors' and friends' contact information and addresses, and at the top of that list was Tsukishima’s. Yamaguchi put a little star sticker next to it so he wouldn’t have to look too hard whenever he needed it. But he never needed it. Anything _Tsukishima_ buzzed around his head until it stuck fast to Yamaguchi’s brain like flypaper.

Yamaguchi remembers the star stickers, all five multicolored sheets of them. It was the first gift Tsukishima ever gave him. It was the first gift Yamaguchi ever got from a friend.

“Where do you live now?” Yamaguchi asks, and the question tastes bitter.

“Just off campus. North.”

“You don’t live in one of the dorms? I do.”

“No. Thank god,” Tsukishima huffs.

Yamaguchi chuckles. “I can’t see you in a dorm, Tsukki.”

The tiny pond comes into focus on the far side of the courtyard, moonlight glittering from the water’s surface. Behind it, the library looms, the lights in its windows dim as if the building has closed its eyes for the night.

“I was in student housing my second year in Europe,” Tsukishima tells him.

There it is.

Yamaguchi sucks the cool night air into his lungs and holds it there for a moment because it did happen, it _did_ , Tsukishima really did leave—he left for _years_ and Yamaguchi thought he would never mention it at all and it would just grow into this huge empty space, this two-year-long fever dream that Yamaguchi is finally waking up from.

He only realizes he’s stopped walking when Tsukishima turns over his shoulder to look at him. His flashlight glows into the grass at his feet.

“You want to stop here?” he asks.

Yamaguchi nods. Tsukishima joins him on the ground, switching off the flashlight. Above them, stars twinkle in the absence of light. They glow over the sleepy campus. Yamaguchi’s stare darts from one to the next, each one glimmering under his stare. He realizes just how few times he has taken advantage of opportunities like this: opportunities to feel so absolutely minuscule; to put his problems and fears into perspective beneath burning galaxies.

“One of those is really Jupiter?” he asks the sky.

“Potentially,” Tsukishima answers.

He puts their papers to the side and leans back onto his hands. Yamaguchi mirrors him.

“Was it hard to see stars in the city?” he wonders.

Tsukishima turns to him. “What?”

“In Paris. With all the light pollution, I mean.”

“I didn’t live in the city.”

Yamaguchi turns to meet his stare, his brow furrowed.

“No?” he questions, and Tsukishima shakes his head.

“No. Where did you get that from?”

Yamaguchi searches his brain but comes up blank. Crickets hum in the quiet. He blinks at him.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. "That’s just always what I imagined.”

Tsukishima hums but doesn’t turn away. Yamaguchi feels his stare hang on him like a jacket slung over his shoulders. Yamaguchi tries to shake it off.

“It’s not like you told me much,” he mumbles.

That does the trick; Tsukishima’s eyes slide from him.

Tsukishima sighs, “I know.”

Yamaguchi’s face burns as he clenches his fingers into the grass at his sides. The air feels off now, static, each molecule frozen in space between them. Yamaguchi pulls in a slow breath, grateful for the cover of night and the distraction of the dazzling sky. Next to him, Tsukishima pulls his knees to his chest.

“I hate sitting on grass,” he says.

“I know,” Yamaguchi breathes. “I know you do.”

“Oh, yeah.” Tsukishima glances toward the pond, then glances back at him. “I guess you do know that.”

“You would only bitch about it, like, every single day of practice.”

Tsukishima scoffs. “I don’t bitch. I just reiterate my frustrations.”

“Over and over and over again,” Yamaguchi adds cheekily.

There’s a tiny snap as Tsukishima plucks a blade of grass from between them. He rolls it between his fingers as he talks. Buried under pond ripples and crickets and buzzing lampposts on nearby sidewalks, his voice is soft.

“Maybe I just wanted to make sure you’d never forget it.”

Yamaguchi breathes a tentative laugh. “That you hate sitting in the grass, Tsukki?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I haven’t forgotten,” he reassures. “There’s very little I’ve forgotten. About you, I mean.”

They share a glance. Without his glasses, Tsukishima looks infinitely more vulnerable.

“Somehow I believe that. You always had a remarkable memory.”

“I did?”

“Comparatively speaking, at least. I don’t remember a lot,” he admits.

Yamaguchi catches familiar gold in his eyes from the distant glow of a lamppost. Something deep within him aches with the possibility that Tsukishima doesn’t remember the egg tarts his grandmother used to make them in summer, that Tsukishima can’t recall the road trip to the zoo they took when his brother first got his license, that he doesn’t remember the stench of smoke when the car broke down on the way home. Maybe Tsukishima has forgotten the way they used to talk at night in his bedroom as they stared up at the moonlight on the ceiling, has forgotten how he used to offer him his bed instead of the floor, has forgotten that Yamaguchi took him up on it every single time. Maybe Tsukishima doesn’t remember the five sheets of star stickers he gave him for no particular reason as they sat in his kitchen at nine years old.

“It’s been a while, though,” Tsukishima drawls, mischievous. He pulls Yamaguchi from his thoughts. “There might be more for you to remember moving forward. I may be a bit different now.”

“Oh? Different how?” Yamaguchi challenges.

“I won’t tell you to shut up anymore.”

“In Japanese, anyway. Now you’ll tell me to shut up in French.”

Tsukishima stutters a quick laugh, loud in the hushed courtyard. Yamaguchi grins despite himself. They both lean back on their hands once more, tilting their faces toward the night sky. The grass rustles beneath them.

His friends were wrong; it doesn’t feel like closure. It feels like a door being opened.


	4. chasm

Oikawa pipes pale yellow frosting from a pastry bag, twirling it carefully over the top of a white cupcake. Yamaguchi sits at the breakfast bar and kicks his toes against the front of the counter. Iwaizumi snores in the other room. 

“Does he always do that?” Yamaguchi wonders.

Oikawa stops frosting for a moment to listen. Iwaizumi snores over the murmuring television.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t even notice it anymore.”

“You don’t notice that?”

“Nope,” Oikawa chirps, placing the finished cupcake on the tray with the others. He licks a swirl of frosting from his thumb. “The joys of marriage, Tadashi.”

“You aren’t married.”

Oikawa shrugs happily and runs his hands under the sink. Yamaguchi catches a whiff of citrus from the foaming hand soap. He yawns. Oikawa spins around to watch him.

“Did you even sleep at all?” he asks.

“Yes. I mean, kind of. I think I got home around four.”

“Yeah, I know that much. Thanks for the sleep-deprived emergency text, by the way. It was artful, yet understated,” Oikawa lets him know, plucking his phone from the countertop with a flourish. "Here we go. ‘ _Oiks listen Tsukki is my fucking planet partner and I don’t know, is Jupiter even naked to the visible eye? He picked it too and I don’t know if I can fall asleep now but I’ll be there tomorrow then tomorrow and I’m home now but please bedtime okay. Goodnight, love you lots and lots.’”_

Yamaguchi cringes. “Did I really say love you lots?”

“No. I added that part.”

“Knew it.”

“But I’m sure you were thinking it,” Oikawa insists. “What are you going to do?”

Yamaguchi shrugs his shoulders and glances around the kitchen.

“I think eating a cupcake would be a good start,” he tries.

Oikawa pushes the decorative cupcake tray farther from him as if Yamaguchi’s arm will launch from its socket and fly halfway across the kitchen to grab one.

“Absolutely not. I can make you your own cupcakes later.”

“At least make some for Hinata and I’s dorm movie night. I’ll pay you.”

“That is such a blatant lie, Tadashi.”

Yamaguchi’s stomach growls. “Okay, okay, it was. But you should still bring some.”

“Fine, maybe. But first, we have to figure this out. Are you gonna drop the club? If it’s that bad, maybe the instructor can put you with someone else or something,” he suggests. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“That’s the thing though,” Yamaguchi sighs, tracing the tile grout on the countertop with his finger. “It wasn’t bad. It was _good_. It felt…I don’t know, normal.”

Oikawa sighs back at him. He busies himself with putting batter-lined bowls in the sink.

“I just—I don’t know how you’re not _mad_ , you know? If my best friend—if _you_ —up and moved to fucking France in the middle of the school year and only told me a few days prior, I would lose my shit, Tadashi. How are you so nonchalant right now, anyway?” Oikawa goes on, running the tap over one of his rubber-tipped spatulas. “I would be pissed off.”

Yamaguchi spays his hands on the countertop and pulls in a contemplative breath.

“I’m not, though. It’s not like that—I’m not like that,” he decides.

“Then you are way more forgiving than me,” Oikawa huffs.

Yamaguchi smirks. “No doubt about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you are the ultimate grudge-holder, Oikawa.”

Oikawa pats the clean dishes dry and says, “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, please,” Yamaguchi scoffs. “You still tear articles about old Shiratorizawa players out of the volleyball magazines you get.”

Oikawa spins on his heel. “So what?”

“So, eighty percent of those guys aren’t even in the same division as you anymore.”

“I still don’t like their stupid faces,” he sneers. “Besides, that behavior is basically normal.”

The glass bowl clinks on the countertop as Oikawa sets it down. Iwaizumi snores particularly loud in the living room, the television drowned out completely. Yamaguchi chirps a laugh.

“I don’t think you wanna advocate for normal behavior as you bribe your professor with half a dozen _hand-piped_ cupcakes. Especially when you already have a ninety in the class.”

“It’s not a bribe!” Oikawa insists. “A ninety just doesn’t reflect my quality of work.”

“Hand-piped!”

“I deserve at least a ninety-five.”

“Good luck with that.”

Yamaguchi’s stomach growls again at the copious mentions of cupcakes. He watches Oikawa finish patting dry the dishes he’d dirtied. Yamaguchi would help if he could find the strength in his legs to move. He closes his eyes. Even his brain is tired and verbal battles with Oikawa don’t help, however entertaining they may be.

“Oh, I almost forgot. What’s the deal with your laptop? Is it fixed?”

Yamaguchi peeks an eye open. “My laptop?”

“Did you ask Tsukishima about it?”

“I completely forgot,” he realizes. So much for his remarkable memory.

“You forgot?”

“It was three in the morning, Oikawa.”

“Right, right,” Oikawa replies breezily.

Yamaguchi’s eyes fall shut again. He tips his head into his hand and rests it there as he listens to the faucet run, the thin stream of water hitting the steel sink basin. Even Iwaizumi has quieted down from where he naps on the living room couch. Oikawa bustles around the kitchen. Yamaguchi hears his quiet steps. The next time Yamaguchi opens his eyes, he grins. A white frosted cupcake sits on the counter in front of him.

.....

The library seems especially cavernous in the midmorning without crowds or voices to bounce and echo off the curling marble rotunda. Yamaguchi’s shoes slap the tile; the sharpest sound in the grand room. Keyboard click and tap beneath his ruckus. Librarians duck behind resource desks. The only voices in the lobby carry up the basement stairs, Yamaguchi’s sneakers brushing the carpet as he descends them.

Tsukishima stands behind the circular desk, hunched over with his chin in his hand. Tsukishima has always had horrible posture. Yamaguchi traces the half-moon curve of his back. It has to hurt, to ache, _something_. The curved shape of him is familiar somehow, like a worn-in pair of jeans. He almost misses it when, noticing him, Tsukishima straightens.

“I got your text,” Yamaguchi tells him. “Or, well, the library’s text.”

“I didn’t have your number. I tried your old one, but it was out of service.”

Yamaguchi watches the similar curve of Tsukishima’s frown. He hums.

“I got a new phone before my third year of high school,” he says.

Tsukishima’s frown deepens. Yamaguchi grabs the edge of the desk as the ground fractures between them, the earth groaning as the space between them continues to grow. Tsukishima takes his own phone from his pocket and sets it on the orange desk between them. He nudges it toward Yamaguchi with his pointer finger.

“You can give me the new one if you want.”

The chasm stops growing.

“Yeah, okay,” Yamaguchi agrees, taking up the phone.

“For the next time you lock yourself out of the student center at three in the morning.”

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans.

Tsukishima gazes down at him, his stare all calm and golden. He pockets his phone when Yamaguchi offers it back. Yamaguchi stares, too.

“What?” asks Tsukishima.

“Uh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

“It’s something.”

Yamaguchi sighs, “Alright, fine. It’s the glasses. You’re not wearing your glasses, and it’s freaking me out.”

Tsukishima fans his fingers beneath his eyes, touching lightly.

“Is it that bad?” he wonders.

“ _No_ , it’s just—it’s different.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Yamaguchi plants his feet as the chasm divides another inch. He lets out a slow breath.

“So, my computer’s dead?”

Tsukishima nods. He pulls his hand away from his face and thumbs through a stack of pink index cards on the lower portion of the desk between them. Yamaguchi stares at a lock of bright blond hair by the nape of his neck, just a bit of a curlier than the others. Tsukishima straightens again. He sets the pink index card in front of him.

“In few words, yes. If you want us to send it off to get fixed, sign this card. It’ll take a while.”

“What are my other options?” Yamaguchi asks miserably.

Tsukishima shrugs. “Buy a new computer. Be a slave to the library computers for the rest of your university career.”

“Great.”

Yamaguchi sighs and toes idly at the carpet. More voices float down the stairs and a line builds at his back, flustering him. Tsukishima ignores them.

“What have you been doing thus far?” he asks.

“Borrowing Oikawa’s laptop,” Yamaguchi tells him.

Tsukishima nods, leaning back on his heels. Yamaguchi stares up at him; he really has grown taller.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Oh, yeah what?” 

“Yachi and Hinata told me.”

Yamaguchi lurches. “Wait, what? You talked to them?”

“They were in here earlier. They’re in here a lot,” says Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi guesses that’s true. He can’t imagine being ripped from Hinata and Yachi for years like Tsukishima had been—to have his closest companions catapulted hundreds of thousands of miles away. But Yamaguchi doesn’t have to imagine. He gnaws at his lip. Yamaguchi instantly longs to hear every ounce of information his friends have passed on about him, and exactly how Tsukishima reacted to each bit.

“I bet it was good to see them again,” he says instead.

“Yachi, sure. Hinata, not so much.”

Yamaguchi grins at Tsukishima’s smirk.

“I knew you were gonna say that.” He plucks a pen from the plentiful cup on the desk and writes his name on the line Tsukishima showed him. He slides the card across the counter. “Here. I can’t borrow Oikawa’s laptop for the next six months.”

“ _No_ , you can’t.”

Yamaguchi jumps as Oikawa slides into him, slinging an arm over his shoulder.

“Jesus, Oikawa,” he gasps.

“You can’t even borrow it for the next hour,” Oikawa goes on, “because I have a pop-up extra credit quiz to do, and the window is only forty minutes. Hi, Tsukishima. Or should I say _bonjour_?”

Yamaguchi stares between them for a moment, wide-eyed, as his worlds collide. Or, in his case, worlds colliding, ripping apart, and colliding once more, crashing into one another twice as hard this time. He digs Oikawa’s laptop out of his backpack when he prompts him with a tap on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Tsukishima replies.

“How are you?” Oikawa rushes, sliding his computer into his own bag. “Good? Good. Tadashi, I’ll see you later. Thanks for the laptop.”

“But it’s yours,” Yamaguchi laughs.

“By the way, guess who now has a ninety-six?”

“Oh my god,” he gasps. “One percent per cupcake."

“One percent per cupcake,” Oikawa boasts,” so now I’m definitely bringing them to the movie night.”

“ _Had_ to be the cupcakes. Couldn’t be all the extra credit quizzes.”

Oikawa beams and throws his hands up humbly. He zips up the library stairs. Yamaguchi spins on his heel to face Tsukishima again but his stare is elsewhere, shining and contemplative, stuck to where Oikawa disappeared. When he stares back at him, his face is pinched like he’s smelled something sour.

“That’s your best friend?” Tsukishima asks, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

Yamaguchi nods proudly. Tsukishima just hums and files Yamaguchi’s pink index card with the others.

.....

Near the end of middle school, Tsukishima’s parents announced Thursday nights as _family game night_. In an effort to combat this, Tsukishima had Yamaguchi over every Thursday night for a valid excuse. Yamaguchi knew he was the scapegoat but he didn’t care—those days he lived for evenings stashed away in Tsukishima’s room, a single lamp lobbing yellow light against beige walls. The two of them played on one video game controller because the other had broken. If Tsukishima ever planned to buy another one, he didn’t tell him, and if the hoots and hollers from the kitchen were anything to go by, Tsukishima’s parents had just as much fun without them.

Yamaguchi still remembers the heat as Tsukishima’s thigh pressed to his, together with him on his bed. Tsukishima never told him to move over. He remembers the heat in his shoulder and in his cheeks. He remembers thinking how Tsukishima must see it, must _feel_ it, red hot and raising the temperature in the room. For years, Yamaguchi rose the temperature in that room. Tsukishima never said a word. He just handed Yamaguchi the controller when his turn was over.

“You know,” Tsukishima told him one of those nights, “I’ve never had a best friend before.”

Yamaguchi grabbed the sentiment from the air when Tsukishima turned away. He folded it, carefully like origami, and pocketed it.

Thursdays become Fridays, which became Saturdays, so on and so forth until Tsukishima’s home was second to Yamaguchi’s own. Yamaguchi loved Tsukishima’s home; yearned for it long after the Tsukishimas smothered its heartbeat and left it to a pair of elderly gentlemen who Yamaguchi met on accident after passing by one too many times. After Tsukishima left, the lot turned grey. The grass lost its vibrancy. Rusty metal ate its way through the black paint on the mailbox. Even after the house’s new owners tossed down fertilizer and slapped up yellow paint, the old wounds were all Yamaguchi saw. He took a different route to school after that. It was a long time before yellow stopped looking grey.

The first time he saw yellow again, he saw it in Yachi. He saw it in her hair, shiny and silken. He saw pink in her cheeks. He saw ivory in her soft skin and blue in the veins on her thin wrists as she wove her fingers through his. After Tsukishima’s storm, she was a rainbow.

For two years, Yamaguchi wondered about all the warmth in Tsukishima; if it’s still there and if it is, he wonders who has felt it. He wonders who else has gotten close enough to get burnt. He thinks about Tsukishima in his bedroom somewhere in Paris, the city lights shining through the window, and Yamaguchi wonders who they shone upon. He wonders who sat on his bed with him or maybe laid beside him in it and felt him warm at their back. He wonders if Tsukishima ever said something to someone else that they reached out and pocketed, just like Yamaguchi had. He wonders if Tsukishima ever bought a second controller. Some small part of Yamaguchi hopes he did, if only so that nobody else got to feel the warmth of Tsukishima’s palms on the plastic when he handed it over.

.....

“This feels more like a class than a club,” Tsukishima scoffs as he lays out their papers on the ground between them, the dry grass scratching the smooth pages. “When I signed up, I thought it we would watch space documentaries or something.”

“You still love documentaries, huh?”

“Anyone who doesn’t is crazy,” he tells Yamaguchi.

He straightens the papers on the grass until they’re near perfect. Yamaguchi nudges the last of them into place.

“You know,” he starts, “I actually remember a handful of projects I’ve done just like this. You and I have probably done one or two together.”

Yamaguchi pretends not to remember. He busies himself with tapping his pen on his knee, clicking it so the inky tip pokes in and out, in and out, in and out again.

“Try three,” corrects Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi gapes. “You remember them?”

Tsukishima flicks a piece of grass off his own knee and hums.  “I quite like space.”

“We did Pluto,” Yamaguchi adds merrily.

“Yes. All three times.”

“Why didn’t you choose Pluto this time, too?”

Tsukishima turns away from him and shrugs. Yamaguchi searches the side of his face as Tsukishima stares up at the night sky, looking for Jupiter. The moonlight caresses his cheek. Its glow drips from his cheekbones and down over his nose, pooling in his cupid’s bow. Yamaguchi closes his mouth. He’s not sure when it parted.

“I guess I don’t know,” Tsukishima answers. “I just wanted something new.”

“With someone old,” Yamaguchi jokes.

Tsukishima turns to him and the moonlight slips to his other cheek. 

“Jupiter will be white,” he tells him, “and more toward the southeast. So this way.” He lifts a finger and points above them to Yamaguchi’s left, his jacket sleeve slipping down his long arm. “It should be the second brightest thing in the sky tonight.”

Yamaguchi squints up at the sky. “How do you know all that?”

“Intuition.”

“Bullshit,” he laughs, and Tsukishima smirks.

“An app I downloaded on my phone earlier. I can send you the link.”

“Thought so.”

“It’s cool, actually,” Tsukishima tells him, pulling his phone from his pocket. “It can show you a—very loosely—estimated pattern of the planets over the next few days, as well as when they may be at their brightest.”

“So, basically our club project,” Yamaguchi replies.

“Basically. It even shows the constellations if you change the settings. Here.”

Their shoulders bump as Tsukishima holds his phone between them. Yamaguchi stares at Tsukishima’s phone screen in the dark. He tries desperately to listen to Tsukishima over the boom of his heartbeat in his ears. He watches his lithe finger tap different icons on the screen, little white lines connecting the stars on the screen as he tilts it up to match the sky above them. Their shoulders rest together.

“Do you wanna come to a movie night at my dorm next week?” blurts Yamaguchi.

Tsukishima takes a moment. Yamaguchi has to reel back to make sure he’s actually said something.

“Sure,” Tsukishima says.

“It’s shark-themed,” Yamaguchi adds.

“Then I’m double sure.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Tsukishima parrots.

The grass crunches under his palms as Yamaguchi leans back. Tsukishima follows suit, keeping an eye on him like he might bolt. When he turns back, Yamaguchi sees his chest rise and he breathes in. A soft breeze carries with it the threat of autumn chill, whirling around their ankles and leaving the hairs on the backs of their necks standing on end. Yamaguchi breathes with him. He follows Tsukishima’s glance upward.

“Why did you choose Jupiter?” Tsukishima asks him finally.

“I think Jupiter is the only planet I haven’t done yet. Not like I remember anything about the other planets, though.”

“Even with your memory?”

“I only remember important things, Tsukki.”

Homework, birthdays, Tsukishima’s old address, his smell, the specific tooth he cracked when his brother bought a new skateboard.

“And the _solar system_ doesn’t make the cut?”

Yamaguchi breathes a laugh. “Apparently not.”


	5. shark cupcakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for waiting on me. i just moved into a new apartment!
> 
> happy reading <3

When Tsukishima left, he ripped his roots right from the garden Yamaguchi had grown inside himself. He left holes, fissures, gouges the soil, and for the longest time, Yamaguchi hadn’t wanted to fill them. Now, Yamaguchi pays mind to every tear in his stems and every wilting leaf.

“I don’t know how to feel,” Yamaguchi admits, his hair fanned over Yachi’s lap. The air conditioning unit in her dorm building whirs in their silence. The hallway just outside the door is quiet and dim. Every once in a while, timid footsteps creak on the paper-thin carpet. “You know, the people in your building are a lot more polite than they are in mine.”

“This is an all-girls floor,” Yachi reminds him.

“I’m polite.”

“You’re one of the good ones.”

Yamaguchi breathes a laugh. She snickers and pats his head absentmindedly, her eyes on her notebook. Yamaguchi breathes deep and wonders if the remaining root rot and mildew in him took hold of Yachi when she planted herself beside him. If it did, he sees no signs of it now, nearly a year after the fact. He hopes it was easy to shake him off. He sees her petals, healthy and delicate, and Yamaguchi knows he would be lucky to absorb even an ounce of her vivacity.

“I can hear you thinking. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy. You want to talk about it?”

The air conditioner shuts off. Yamaguchi lets out a breath.

“I want to be with him, you know, near him, but—Yachi, I think I’m _scared_.”

“Who, Tsukishima? What are you scared of?”

Yamaguchi lets out a breath like he’s finally managed to poke a hole in the balloon in his chest and now the pressure funnels out of him, his lungs heaving, fitting back into place. He sits up.

“I’m scared to have fun with him. What if I get close to him again like we were before and—”

“And he leaves,” Yachi finishes.

Yamaguchi deflates again, his head slumping onto Yachi’s shoulder. 

“Yeah,” he says, his voice soft in his throat. “That.”

Yachi bites her lip, thinking. She pats his knee and lets him do the same for a while, just the two of them and their thoughts and the air conditioning, kicking on once again to fill the silence. Yamaguchi rereads the text Tsukishima had sent him hours ago. He stares at the periods and commas, so formal when he texts, just like he was back then. Yamaguchi checks the time stamp of his response and spies the little checkmarks next to it—delivered. Tsukishima throws up a roadblock in his brain. All thoughts stop at him, and nothing gets around.

More than anything, Yamaguchi craves Tsukishima’s voice. He craves it like he craves something sweet after days of tasting savory. Deep but lilting, it fits just right in his ears, Tsukishima’s familiar cadence pooling gently in Yamaguchi’s head. They never spoke on the phone in high school. Yamaguchi wonders if they should start now. He wonders if it’s too late for that.

Yamaguchi wonders if everything is too late for them.

He shakes the thought from his head, jostling Tsukishima’s medians and orange traffic cones. Yamaguchi stares at a tuck in Yachi’s pale pink comforter across the room near the foot of her bed. If she followed his gaze, she would be up and fixing it right now. The thought makes him grin.

“Just what’s that face for?” she asks.

“Nothing. Yachi?”

“Yes?”

“Was I fucked up after Tsukki left?”

Yachi hums thoughtfully. “Let’s just say that I’d never seen you that low before, and I hope I never see you like that again.”

Alone in Karasuno hallways, Yamaguchi remembers the incessant chatter of his classmates, remembers the ache in his head, pounding for two weeks straight, remembers the cool metal against his palm as he pressed it to Tsukishima’s empty locker. The memory sends goosebumps up his arms.

“Is that a yes?” he asks, wrapping his arms around himself.

Yachi just gives him a sorry grin.

“And you liked me anyway?”

“I knew you’d throw that back in my face,” Yachi teases. She laughs brightly when Yamaguchi guffaws. “Yamaguchi, I won’t ever regret being with you at that time in your life. You really did need someone.”

Yamaguchi gnaws at his lip. He lies back down, his feet hanging over the arm of the tiny couch.He stares at the panels on the ceiling. His gratefulness for Yachi is outweighed only by the crushing guilt he feels for turning their relationship into one big therapy session. She should not have had to sew his stitches for gashes Tsukishima left. She deserved more than that; deserved more of Yamaguchi than the wrung-out, mangled version she got. It wasn’t fair.

“Nothing’s fair,” Yamaguchi grumbles at the ceiling panels.

“I know you’re scared. But for what it’s worth, Yamaguchi, I haven’t seen you this excited in a long time.”

He tilts his head back to look up at her. “Excited?”

“Like you’re looking forward to something all the time. It’s really nice.”

Astronomy Club is in three days. Yamaguchi sees moonlight on porcelain skin.

“Movie night is in two days,” he tells her.

“I know what your movie night excitement looks like,” Yachi replies, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow, “and this isn’t it. I can tell.”

“But it’s shark-themed.”

“It is?”

“You’re coming, right?”

Yachi’s gaze shifts restlessly, her hand tightening around her pen. “I’m not sure yet.”

“What? Yachi!”

“I don’t like sharks! They’re scary. They have too, _too_ many teeth.”

“You have to come. It’s not a movie night without you.”

Yachi tosses her pen on the couch, defeated. “Fine, fine,” she sighs.

“We’ll all be there—even Tsukki. So you shouldn’t be scared.”

“Alright,” Yachi agrees, giving him a knowing grin. “Then you shouldn’t be, either.”

…..

“Wow.”

“Holy shit.”

“Impressive.”

Yamaguchi, Hinata, and Akaashi observe the delectable spread on the common room table: a dozen chocolate cupcakes with multicolored blue frosting twirled over the edge like rampant waves. A grey plastic shark fin pokes from the top of each of them. The fluorescent dorm lights shine from their dull tips.

“He really goes all out for themes, eh?” Bokuto admires, kneeling down to get a better look. “That guy sure likes to bake.”

“Bokuto, please keep your visitor pin on,” says Akaashi.

“I can have two, right? There will be enough?”

“Sure.”

Bokuto squints at the treats. “These really aren’t store-bought? Look at that. That’s edible _glitter.”_

“I’m offended you would even ask that,” Oikawa interjects, swinging the basement door shut.

Bokuto cheers and greets him with a bear hug, his giant arms tensing around Oikawa’s midsection. He looks like he could launch him into the wall and leave a very distinct Oikawa-shaped hole. Yamaguchi glances at the giant television when the title card of their first movie glares from the scene, all quick cuts with actors' faces twisted up in pain and pools of syrupy fake blood shooting through the waves. He pats Yachi’s back when she groans in disgust.

“This is gonna be a long night. You owe me,” she tells him.

“Can I get you a cupcake?” Yamaguchi offers.

Hinata hops over the spine of the couch and lands at Yachi’s side, claiming his spot.

“Hey Yamaguchi, where’s Tsukishima? I got the movie all ready.”

“ _Tadashi?_ ” barks Oikawa.

Tadashi jumps. He’s instantly thrown back to the moment his mother found the collection of beetles him and Tsukishima kept in tiny cups in his desk drawer one summer when they were small.

“Yes?” he asks timidly.

“Come get a soda with me.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Then help me choose mine,” Oikawa insists.

Tadashi follows him to the vending machines that whir quietly in the corner of the room, casting neon colors through the dim basement. Oikawa spins on his heel to face him. His jaw locks in a frown. Yamaguchi teeters from foot to foot.

“I’m not thirsty,” he tries again.

“Maybe not for _soda._ ”

“What are you talking about?”

“ _Tsukishima_ is coming? Here? Tonight?” he hisses.

Oikawa puts his hands on his hips and squints. Tadashi knows that look; he makes the same pinched up face when Iwaizumi puts his dirty dishes on the counter on top of the dishwasher instead of inside it. Yamaguchi shrugs.

“Well, yeah. Oikawa, it’ll be fine. Just be nice.”

“So, what?” Oikawa starts, staring hard at him. “You’re just gonna…hang out with him? Best buddies again?”

“I don’t know,” Yamaguchi tells him honestly.

“I didn’t make enough shark cupcakes for _him_.”

“Oikawa, there are twelve.”

Oikawa crosses his arms over his chest but more than anger knits his brow. Yamaguchi gulps when he sees it—concern. They both flinch when the soda machine beside them beeps. Oikawa draws out a long sigh. Yamaguchi places his hands on his shoulders and pulls every ounce of reassurance he can muster into his grin.

“It’ll be fine,” he promises.

“Whatever,” Oikawa grumbles, but he pats Yamaguchi’s hands anyway. “Tadashi, your ass is ringing.”

“Oh, right.”

He pulls his phone from his pocket. _Here_ , reads Tsukishima’s text message.

“As succinct as ever,” Yamaguchi mumbles to himself.

“Huh?”

“I’m gonna go get Tsukki,” he says, but makes no real effort to move.

“Are you going?” prods Oikawa.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

The staircase to the lobby feels a mile long. In one of the glass panes on either side of the front door, Yamaguchi sees Tsukishima—half of him, at least—as he teeters from foot to foot. Yamaguchi stops on the landing. He catalogues his damp palms, his heart as it knocks against his ribcage, the weight in his feet that anchors him to the checkered tile. He smacks a shaky hand against his thigh.

“What are you nervous for?” he chides.

He ignores the group of girls in the corner when they give him funny looks and pulls open the front door. Briefly, Yamaguchi thinks about hugging him. More than anything, he wonders if they had hugged when they first met again, if things would be different. Yamaguchi could have done so many things differently. He could have hugged him, could have broken that boundary right off the bat so he wouldn’t be stuck with the inclination. He could have walked right back up the library stairs. He could have taken Oikawa’s route and told him to fuck off.

Tsukishima wears his glasses. Yamaguchi’s greeting freezes in his throat.

“Hey,” Tsukishima says first.

“You’re wearing your glasses,” Yamaguchi blurts. “Oh, sorry. Hey.”

Tsukishima lifts a hand to his face and presses his gentle forefinger to the bridge of his glasses.

“Yeah.”

“Did you lose your contacts or something?”

Tsukishima’s hand falls back to his side, his gaze somewhere over Yamaguchi’s shoulder.

“Something like that,” he answers.

Yamaguchi grins but his own gaze sticks to the black plastic that frames Tsukishima’s eyes, the light above the front door beaming from the lenses. The familiar glare slingshots Yamaguchi back two, three, four years—back before Paris, before university, before oceans raged between them. Yamaguchi knows he’ll spend the entire night sailing back to the present.

…..

On the screen, a tiger shark rips into the leg of a beachgoer in a hot pink bikini.

“Sharks look so weirdly smooth,” Hinata notes, leaning closer to the television despite the way Yachi clings to his arm for dear life.

Bokuto takes an enormous bite of a cupcake and speaks through it. “Do you think they feel just like dolphins? They’re similar enough, right?”

Akaashi bumps his elbow against his side for talking with his mouth full. Yamaguchi glances over at Tsukishima, his knees tucked to his chest and curled against the armrest of the couch. Despite his size, Tsukishima easily folds himself into the smallest spaces. Yamaguchi laments this only for the fact that, when they were kids, it made hide and seek very difficult.

“This is what we get for not getting better seats,” Tsukishima murmurs as a jump scare jostles Bokuto from his seat on the couch, effectively plastering Yamaguchi to Tsukishima’s side.

“I know you missed him,” Yamaguchi insists.

“It actually wouldn’t be so bad if your elbows weren’t like skewers.”

“My elbows are the perfect amount of sharpness.”

The screen flashes from the dark, deep blue of the ocean to a white sandy beach. A frantic man buzzes along the stretch. He stops short and edges closer to the shore, a puzzled look on his face. The shot jumps to a close-up of the damp sand. The next wave carries a hot pink pair of bikini bottoms onto the shore. The man lets out an ear-splitting scream.

“Wait,” says Yamaguchi, “why is he screaming? He doesn’t know the context of that.”

“Maybe he’s scared of half-naked women,” Yachi guesses.

“Same,” blurts Oikawa.

Yamaguchi snorts as Hinata drops from the couch to the floor in his laughter. Bokuto gives Oikawa a jovial slap on the back and even Tsukishima grins behind his hand, despite the iciness radiating his way from Oikawa all evening long. Deep navy devours the television screen once more as the camera dives below the waves.

“He screamed because that’s his girlfriend’s bathing suit,” Akaashi clarifies. “Am I the only one actually watching?”

“I’m only here for the sharks. I pay very little attention to the people,” admits Oikawa.

Hinata and Bokuto nod in agreement. The shark swims by in the distance, the brightest point on the screen.

“They just look so _smooth_ ,” Hinata gushes again.

“Their texture is actually more like sandpaper,” corrects Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi can’t see his face, but he _feels_ Oikawa roll his eyes with so much vigor that he swears the couch shakes on its wooden feet.

Akaashi grins. “Still well-read, I see, Tsukishima.”

“Thank you, Akaashi.”

“I think you’re confusing well-read with getting super high and watching only ocean documentaries.”

Tsukishima grimaces at Yamaguchi. “I regret telling you that.”

“I knew you would,” Yamaguchi replies, beaming.

He nudges his skewer elbow into Tsukishima’s side until he stops grimacing. He actually smiles a little, a quiet smile—a private smile—untucking his legs from his chest to stretch over the floor in front of the couch. Yamaguchi spies a tiny tear in the denim of his jeans, just over his knee. He vaguely hears Bokuto on his other side booming something about how he wishes men had more options for swimwear, vaguely hears Hinata’s spirited agreements, but their words fall to hums. Tsukishima stares peacefully at him.

Yamaguchi wants to fold himself up and tuck himself in the tear in Tsukishima’s denim, wants to hide there until his heart climbs down from his throat. But he’s glued to the couch and warm—no, melting—at Tsukishima’s side. When Yachi’s face slides into his peripherals, Yamaguchi snaps out of it. He hears an audible _snap_ as he tears his gaze from Tsukishima’s.

“You know,” she pipes up, “that wasn’t so bad. Is anyone up for another?”

“ _What_? Really?” asks Yamaguchi. “Yachi, your hair is still matted to the side of your head from hiding your face in the couch all night.”

Hinata pats her head in an attempt to help her smooth down her hair. “I’ll watch another with you, Yachi. It gives me another chance to imagine the sharks all _sand-papery_ instead of glossy like dolphins.”

“Well,” Oikawa drawls as he stands from the couch. He stretches his arms in a long oval over his head. “I'm going home and going to bed. Hajime’s outside.”

Yamaguchi frowns. “You’re leaving?”

“Iwaizumi’s here?!” Bokuto screeches. “Let me see him!”

Akaashi stands with Bokuto. “I’ll say hello, too.”

The three of them make their way to the basement stairs, Bokuto bounding up first. 

“One sec,” Yamaguchi tells Tsukishima. 

He rushes to the stairs after them. He grabs Oikawa by the arm before he can follow Akaashi to the lobby.

“Hey, that is perfectly ivory skin you’re bruising.”

“You’re going already?” Yamaguchi whines.

“What are you pouting for? You’ve got Tsukishima. Go have fun. Not too much fun, though.”

“It would be nice if you could say two words to the guy.”

Oikawa's resounding sigh is powerful.

“Bye, Tsukishima,” he hollers, and Tsukishima glances up from his phone to nod back at him. Oikawa lifts his hand to give Yamaguchi a peace sign. “One, two. See? I did it.”

Yamaguchi squints at him. Oikawa gives him a cheesy grin.

“You’re a brat.”

“Tadashi, I don’t condone this,” Oikawa reminds him.

“I just wanna be happy,” Yamaguchi confesses.

Oikawa stares at him with wide eyes. Something swims in their rich brown—the same colors of concern from earlier. It makes Yamaguchi want to run and hide. He resists the urge to glance back at the tear over Tsukishima’s knee.  Oikawa steps closer and pulls him into a tight hug. Yamaguchi pats his back, but he doesn’t let go.

“I’m fine,” Yamaguchi promises.

Stepping back, Oikawa leaves a hand on his shoulder. The vending machines whir once again at their sides. His hand grips Yamaguchi’s shoulder once more before it slips off and falls back to his side.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. Oikawa turns back to him midway up the stairs to wag a finger at him. “Not too much fun, remember?”

Yamaguchi tries like hell to cool the scalding blush on his face before he makes it back across the basement. Hinata has fanned the dozen shark-related DVDs he had rented over the carpet like playing cards. Him and Yachi flip each one to read their summaries. The title music of the film they’d finished plays on a loop, an obvious glitch in the middle of the score where the same ten notes start over again. Tsukishima puts his phone away when Yamaguchi returns to his place on the couch.

“What’s shark in French?”

“ _Requin_ ,” Tsukishima replies.

Yamaguchi’s face burns hotter. He stares down at his lap in an attempt to hide it.

“How’d you know that?”

“You don’t live there for two years without picking some things up.”

“I guess that’s true. What else can you say?”

“ _Je peux voir que tu rougis_.”

Yamaguchi glances up at Tsukishima, watching the way his lips curve around his vowels and caress the consonants.

“What’s that mean?” Yamaguchi asks.

“Are you guys gonna watch with us?” Hinata calls over the music.

The two of them turn to him and Yachi, encircled in a splatter of open DVD cases. The ceiling lights glare from the disc Hinata shakes at them, undoubtedly smearing fingerprints all over it. Yamaguchi turns over his shoulder to stare at Tsukishima, his brow furrowed.

“Did you want to watch another one?”

“You can pick one if you want, Tsukishima,” offers Yachi.

“Enticing,” Tsukishima answers, “but I’m okay. Thanks.”

Yachi gives him a cheery nod before she confiscates the disc from Hinata and pops it in the ancient DVD player. An eerie, dramatic score once again blares from the speakers. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi escape upstairs after their goodbyes, and after Tsukishima steals one more cupcake.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” Yamaguchi whispers.

The lobby is pitch black now, only a few safety lights in the hallways on at such an hour.

“They’re better than good,” Tsukishima admits, peeling the paper liner down. A glob of blue frosting glues onto his index finger. He licks it off and adds, “Don’t tell him I said that.”

Yamaguchi snickers. “We can go to my room if you want.”

“Sure.”

The old stairs creak as they climb them. Down the hall, light creeps out from under Akaashi’s door. They must have snuck up here after seeing Iwaizumi, Yamaguchi reasons, and he wonders what they’ll do now. Akaashi hosts a certain brightness around Bokuto—Yamaguchi saw it tonight—and he wonders if he himself takes on a shine in certain company, and just how transparent something like that can be. He unlocks his own room and pushes the door open. As Tsukishima steps inside, Yamaguchi stays in the doorway and stares.

At the lack of footsteps behind him, Tsukishima turns around.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Yamaguchi takes a breath. “I just—I never thought I’d see you here. In this room, I mean.”

Tsukishima nods pensively. He sits on Yamaguchi’s bed, the bottom of the top bunk skimming his head. He threads his long fingers through his hair to fix it.

“It’s tiny,” Tsukishima says.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. If it's any conciliation, my last dorm room in Europe was smaller.”

“Seriously?”

He nods. “My feet and ankles hung off the bed.”

“To be fair, Tsukki, that's the case in most beds.”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima agrees, placing the paper liner of his cupcake in the trash bin by the desk. “I like this room, though. It’s very you.”

Yamaguchi finally comes in, closing the door behind him with a muted click. He takes a look at the splotchy paint and peeling vinyl, his and Hinata’s comforters tossed aside on their respective mattresses. Three crinkled coke cans lie on the floor next to the trash bin. Yamaguchi cringes; he really needs to rethink his caffeine intake.

“This room is a mess,” he confesses.

“No,” Tsukishima argues gently. “It’s familiar. It’s tranquil.”

“That’s only ‘cause Hinata isn’t here.”

He huffs a laugh. Yamaguchi beams from the accomplishment. He sits near Tsukishima at the adjoining desk, pushing old handouts and assignments to the side. He picks up his favorite ballpoint pen and clicks it absently. He watches Tsukishima run his forefinger over the tear in his jeans. Yamaguchi wonders if he heard him thinking about it earlier. At once, Tsukishima’s finger stills. They catch each other’s stare.

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima murmurs. “I never thought I’d be here, either.”

Yamaguchi stays quiet, the only sound in the room the soft clicking of the pen. He keeps his stare. It’s easy to; Tsukishima’s eyes are wide, shining like coins in the dull dorm lights, pulling Yamaguchi to the edge of his seat. Tsukishima’s lips part again.

“But I’m so relieved that I am.”

Tsukishima’s words grow giant in the tiny room. Yamaguchi braces himself as they tip his chair back on its legs, press the peeled paint back to the walls, push the ballpoint pen further into his hand. Quietly, Tsukishima reaches over the desk. He moves his fingertip just below the tip of Yamaguchi’s pen.

“Me too,” Yamaguchi swears.

Over Tsukishima’s fingerprint, Yamaguchi draws a tiny star.

Tsukishima pulls his hand back to himself and regards the sketch with a grin. He lets it dry before he shifts to the side to lie on his back, Yamaguchi’s mattress squeaking beneath him. Yamaguchi bites the inside of his cheek. Tsukishima covers a yawn with his hand before it falls back to his side on the bed, his eyes falling closed.

“I bet Hinata fought tooth and nail for the top bunk,” he muses with a smirk.

“You have no idea, Tsukki. I only argued for sport, though. I didn’t really want it.”

“Good thinking, as always.”

Footsteps creak in the ceiling from the room above them. Yamaguchi tosses the pen back on the desk.

“Oh my god, Tsukki,” he laughs. “I was right!”

Tsukishima doesn’t budge. “About what?”

“Your feet _and_ your ankles are off the bed.”

“Told you,” he groans. “Must I always suffer?”

“So dramatic, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima stays quiet but he grins. Despite his height, Tsukishima looks like he could fall asleep. Yamaguchi wants to tell him to stay, wants to toss the comforter on top of him and turn the lights off. He’d take the floor. Yamaguchi wouldn’t mind, if only for a night. Maybe Tsukishima would make room for him on the bed like he used to, breathing softly with his warm back to Yamaguchi’s. He could take the side against the wall. Yamaguchi wouldn’t mind.


	6. parts

“What special skills do you have?”

“I can tie a gummy worm in a knot with my tongue.”

“Please take this seriously.”

Yamaguchi holds in his groan to appease Akaashi, posing his hands over the keyboard. He stares at the blinking cursor on the screen. He types anything on the list that he can think of—Akaashi will edit the hell out of it later—and tries to focus through the clusters of chittering students behind them. Yamaguchi occupies the computer closest to the tech desk; the only one available due to the influx of studying students, their midterms quickly approaching. Tsukishima’s lull cuts through the white noise every so often. Yamaguchi zeroes in on it every time.

“Customer service?” Akaashi reads.

“I worked at the supermarket in high school,” Yamaguchi tells him.

“That’s good. We should expand on that.” Akaashi’s praises are few and far between, so Yamaguchi glows in his desk chair. He goes on, “Don’t forget about interpersonal skills. That’s very important. You’re good at talking to people and believe it or not, not a lot of people have that skill.”

“Two compliments?” Yamaguchi cheers. “This early?”

Akaashi tucks his pen in his messenger bag and drones, “You excel with positive reinforcement.”

Yamaguchi can’t help but chuckle. Akaashi pats him on the shoulder like he means no harm and flips his notebook shut. He zips it into his bag and sits the strap on his shoulder.

“I have to get to class, but keep going on this.”

“Have a good class, Akaashi.”

“Thanks. You can email me your draft later.”

A deep buzz erupts from his bag and as he leaves, Akaashi takes the call. Yamaguchi hears Bokuto’s crowing through the speaker from three feet away. Bokuto is best in small doses, but Yamaguchi misses him a bit already. Not a moment later, his own phone chimes on the desk. The girl at the next computer shoots him a glare. He silences it and opens the message.

_Good news about your laptop._

Yamaguchi spins around to see Tsukishima staring, the circle desk freshly clear of students save for a few stragglers on its far side. He pockets his phone and goes over. Tsukishima takes up a pink index card between his fingers.

“What’s the news? My laptop’s fixed?” Yamaguchi marvels.

“No.”

He deflates. “Then what?”

“You are now on a _blue_ index card,” Tsukishima tells him.

He slides the pink one to the side and swipes a light blue index card across the desk to him. Yamaguchi’s student number and laptop model are scrawled across the top. Yamaguchi furrows his brow.

“This looks just like the pink one.”

“Yes, but it means your case number is now in progress _._ They should ship it back to us within fourteen days.”

Yamaguchi scoffs. “Fourteen days? Midterms will be over by then, Tsukki.”

“Hey,” Tsukishima retorts with a shrug, “it’s a free service.”

Yamaguchi can’t argue with that so he just sighs, slumping onto the desk with his chin in his hands. Tsukishima pulls out a couple of file folders. He tucks Yamaguchi’s pink index card in one and his new blue card in the other. Yamaguchi watches his pale fingers as they flip through the stacks to keep them in some kind of order. He gnaws at his lip. Tsukishima tucks the files away and glances at him.

“You look as blue as your index card.”

“Ha,” Yamaguchi responds dryly.

“Yamaguchi, I have to ask you a serious question. It might be awkward.”

He perks up. “What is it?”

Tsukishima looks at him gravely, his hands flat on the desk between them. He takes a deep breath.

“Can you actually tie a gummy worm in a knot with your tongue?”

Yamaguchi laughs so brightly, Tsukishima has to shush him.

…..

If it weren’t for the app on Tsukishima’s phone, Yamaguchi would have never found Jupiter. Albeit brilliantly, it shines silver-white like the twinkling stars that surround it. Tsukishima marks their charts for them while Yamaguchi stargazes. He maps out both dippers and the constellation of his star sign before his eyes are drawn back to Jupiter, something magnetic in its gasses and swirling clouds.

Summer’s fire peters out. Cool breezes swing through the dark courtyard as the night persists. Yamaguchi wraps his arms around himself. Insects hum in the night, hiding in the green that surrounds them. Tsukishima’s pen scratches across paper and Yamaguchi tears his eyes from the night sky long enough to notice the curve of his shoulders as he leans over the grass. Tsukishima pushes his glasses up and sniffles. A moment later, he fans the papers over the grass and leans back to survey his work. Satisfied, his features relax in the dim light. When he turns to Yamaguchi, his gaze softens. Yamaguchi’s heart thumps in his chest.

“Why did you come back?” he wonders suddenly.

Tsukishima watches him for a moment. He leans back on the grass and sighs.

“Same reason I left,” he answers. “My mom’s job.”

“It changed again?”

Tsukishima shakes his head. “She lost it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The grass rustles as Tsukishima shifts, pulling his knees to his chest. He clasps his hands in front of them. Yamaguchi’s stare falls to his lap. He looks up again when Tsukishima goes on.

“Now she’s picking up the pieces in Paris, and—”

“And you’re here,” Yamaguchi finishes.

“And I’m here,” Tsukishima adds, “living at my grandparents’ house, working at the library to get out of their hair.”

Yamaguchi never knew much about Tsukishima’s grandparents on either side. He twists a blade of grass between his fingers.

“You don’t get along with them?”

“They’re great. I guess I just feel guilty.”

Yamaguchi gives him a lopsided grin. “For crashing their retirement party?”

“Pretty much,” Tsukishima confirms.

Yamaguchi can hardly imagine Tsukishima’s presence as an imposition. A hot mug of tea, a nature special, and Tsukishima is happy. Tsukishima nods in agreement when Yamaguchi mentions this and his features relax again, moonlight bending over his pink cheeks. His eyes are bright as he stares at Yamaguchi.

“I was wondering when you’d ask me that—why I came back.”

Yamaguchi blinks. “You were?”

“What took you so long?”

His tone is lilting, teasing, but his stare doesn’t waver. Yamaguchi glances down at the triangle of grass between his crossed legs.

“I guess I thought if I asked, you’d go again,” he admits. He plucks another blade of grass from the ground and twists it slowly between his fingers. Tsukishima waits. Goosebumps raise on Yamaguchi's arms when another breeze pushes through. “I thought if I asked, if I even mentioned that you were back, you would leave again. You would just blip from existence, like a glitch. Like you were never here to begin with. And I didn’t want that to happen, so I just…didn’t ask.”

“Like a superstition?” Tsukishima asks softly.

Yamaguchi nods. Tsukishima hums, leaning back on his hands.

“I’m glad you asked,” he tells him. “Still here, by the way.”

Yamaguchi can’t deny that; Tsukishima glows hot at his side, impossible to ignore like he always was. He lifts his chin to search the sky and Yamaguchi stares at the way his fingers stretch over the grass, knots in several of his knuckles from old volleyball injuries. Tsukishima used to have him wrap them before games. Yamaguchi recalls the sharp smell of adhesive bandages, recalls the warmth of Tsukishima’s calloused skin. The cool wind catapults him back to the present.

“Hot tea would be so good right now,” he mentions, soothing the goosebumps on his arms. “Maybe cider, or chamomile with milk.”

“You’re just going to make yourself colder,” Tsukishima chides.

“Oh, or green tea with honey.”

“Green tea does sound nice.”

He gathers their papers in a neat pile, all but two of their graphs filled in. He zips them into his bag. Yamaguchi hands him a pen that somehow ended up on the opposite side of him. He follows Tsukishima up when he stands, watching Tsukishima as he slings his bag onto his shoulder. Tsukishima spares a glance backward, the student center looming behind them.

“There’s tea at my house,” he mentions coolly, “if you really wanted some.”

Yamaguchi glances at his phone. “Tsukki, it’s four-thirty in the morning.”

“I’ve seen you stay up far later than this. I remember when you first discovered coffee.”

“What a fun two weeks that was,” he sighs.

“I’m going to go have tea. You should come, if you want.”

Yamaguchi teeters on his feet. The sky is already shades lighter than it was half an hour ago. Soon, the stars will vanish under sheets of orange and light pink. He checks his phone again.

“Akaashi would totally disapprove,” he notes.

“More reason to do it.”

Yamaguchi hums and stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

“Alright, Tsukki,” he says through a yawn. "Lead the way.”

…..

“You weren’t kidding,” Yamaguchi whispers.

“I was not,” Tsukishima whispers back.

Tsukishima’s grandparents’ dark, little house is nestled just off-campus in the only bit of greenery in the neighborhood; old trees scrape the roof, trampled grass sprouting on the lawn and through most of the stone walkway. It reminds Yamaguchi of the sidewalks that wind through the east side of campus, vines and tiny flowers forging their way toward sunlight through the grout between red bricks.

“When you said you had tea, I figured you had, like, a normal person amount.”

“My grandma,” Tsukishima explains.

“That must be where you get it.”

Yamaguchi stares in awe. He lets Tsukishima grab their tea bags from the cabinet so there’s no chance he might topple the dozens of boxes stacked neatly on the shelf, not one color left unrepresented. Tsukishima quietly shuts the cupboard door. He grabs two mismatched mugs from a cabinet across the kitchen.

Sneaking through the dark, cozy house with Tsukishima feels like a dream. Yamaguchi watches the fabric of his sweatshirt pucker and shift over Tsukishima’s back as he climbs the stairs in front of him, the only light to guide them glowing through slatted blinds from the lone streetlamp outside. Yamaguchi’s socked feet sink into the thick maroon carpet. In the upstairs hallway, he barely makes out a crude painting of a leopard crouched around a velvet couch. 

“Whoa,” Yamaguchi snickers.

Tsukishima pushes open the door to his bedroom and warm light floods the hallway, igniting the leopard and its couch. 

“That’s not even the worst one,” Tsukishima promises. “She has one in the downstairs bathroom of a garden gnome in a leather recliner.”

Yamaguchi stifles a laugh. Tsukishima shuts the bedroom door behind them with a soft click. Standing close, Yamaguchi smells him; honey and linen, like fresh laundry still warm from the dryer. The room contracts around them, walls bending inward, and Yamaguchi teeters just a step closer on the off chance that he, too, might retain any of his warmth, any of his sweetness. Tsukishima watches him quietly, his fingers curled around his mug.

Yamaguchi distracts himself. He swivels around to find Tsukishima’s bedroom immaculate; white and clean, his bed made, plain pillows propped against his headboard, papers aligned in various stacks on his desk in the corner just like he has them on the circle desk at the library. All of this, Yamaguchi expected. He turns his head to hide a grin. Unexpectedly, Tsukishima’s room is dotted with greenery: porcelain planters with thick stems shooting from the soil, their broad leaves curling toward the carpet, small, plump succulents in shallow flowerpots, one particularly thriving plant dropping handfuls of vines from a ceramic planter in the corner of the ceiling.

“You—you keep all these alive?” Yamaguchi asks him, staring in awe.

“Yeah.”

He turns over his shoulder to find soft pink blooming over Tsukishima’s face.

“They’re awesome,” encourages Yamaguchi, amazed at how the color in his cheeks deepens. “Those vines are taller than you are, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima grins and busies himself with setting his tea mug on the end table. Yamaguchi admires the succulent in the small white pot next to Tsukishima’s mug, now half-empty, weak steam still wafting from it. He sits next to Tsukishima on side of the bed and stills his heart when it tries to jump in his chest. Tsukishima's bed is soft, the comforter thick and downy. Thinking about it, Yamaguchi yawns into the back of his hand. Tsukishima drags his fingernail over one of the plump green leaves of his plant.

“I actually had this one in back in Paris.”

Yamaguchi draws in a breath and hums. “Still smells like baguettes.”

A grin breaks over Tsukishima’s lips. He shakes his head, his steady stare on Yamaguchi.

“So lame,” he claims.

“You are the company you keep, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi counters.

Tsukishima ponders this and shrugs. He grabs his mug from the table.

“Worth it.”

“Yeah?”

“Without a doubt.”

Softly, Tsukishima clinks the mug in his hands against Yamaguchi’s. They both take a long drink. The light from the floor lamp in the corner glows a faint yellow on Tsukishima’s bare bedroom walls, the color soaking into the green leaves that flourish in the room, enriching their colors. Yamaguchi feels Tsukishima’s shoulder against his. When he leans into it to set his mug on the table, Tsukishima leans back. The dreamy feeling blossoms in Yamaguchi’s chest again, his head floating off his shoulders, pink petals spreading in his lungs, green stems wrapping around his ribcage.

“I bet you could keep a succulent like this alive.”

Yamaguchi blinks, tossed back into the moment at hand. “What?”

“They’re very hard to kill,” Tsukishima clarifies.

“Oh,” says Yamaguchi. “Yeah, maybe.”

“They’re the zombies of the plant world.” When Yamaguchi barks a laugh, Tsukishima grins at him and adds, “I thought you’d like that.”

Yamaguchi tracks the curve of Tsukishima’s smirk. Idly, he wonders about all of the hobbies Tsukishima may have picked up in his absence—all the things that could have occupied Tsukishima’s time, tested him, shaped and molded him into the person Yamaguchi sits beside now. He wonders just how many parts of Tsukishima still hide. He wonders how many new parts of himself he hides from Tsukishima.

Empty now, Tsukishima sets his mug back on the table with Yamaguchi's. Yamaguchi perks up.

“Wait a second,” he starts, “I know this.”

He reaches across Tsukishima to take the mug in his hands. It fits in his grip like a perfect puzzle piece.

“Is this—this is the mug we made in art class. In _fourth grade,_ Tsukki.”

“I remember.”

Yamaguchi drags his fingers along the splotchy blue glaze and bent handle, tilted from when Yamaguchi picked it up before it had been fired. Yamaguchi remembers the giant kiln in the back of the tiny, bustling classroom. Fearful of its heat and power, Tsukishima always brought their projects to the back table for them. Tsukishima huffs a laugh when Yamaguchi shares the thought.

“I still don’t understand where that fear came from,” Tsukishima admits.

“Me either, honestly. Thanks for keeping me safe, though.”

“Any time.”

When Yamaguchi flips the mug over, little droplets of tea sink into his jeans.

“You’re getting tea on you,” Tsukishima warns.

“It still has the finger holes!” marvels Yamaguchi.

“Of course it does.”

The bottom of the mug sports two tiny, half-inch deep holes. Unable to tear himself from the squishy clay, Yamaguchi poked his finger in the thick base of the mug while Tsukishima wasn’t looking. Tsukishima was less than pleased. He ignored Yamaguchi for an entire hour and then, just before he brought it to the kiln table, poked his own imperfection right next to Yamaguchi’s.

“I didn’t want to be left out,” Tsukishima claims.

Yamaguchi rolls his eyes, still grinning. The last of the tea droplets drip from the mug and the two of them regard the pair of cavities, baked into place over a decade ago.

“I can’t believe our fingers used to fit in those,” says Yamaguchi.

“I can’t believe you let me choose that awful color.”

He spins the mug in his hands. “What’s wrong with blue?”

“It’s _turquoise,_ ” Tsukishima replies, scrunching his nose.

“Hey,” laughs Yamaguchi, “you’re the one who still has the thing.”

Tsukishima gives him a quiet grin. He takes the mug carefully from Yamaguchi and cradles it in his hands.

“This was the only mug I had in France,” he recalls fondly.

“Seriously?” asks Yamaguchi. “The only one?”

Tsukishima nods and places their creation safely on the table once again. Yamaguchi keeps his eyes on it. He grins, slow and sure. A kind of quiet warmth nestles inside his chest; Tsukishima had a small, silent part of him, a part of _them,_ with him each day, in his cupboard and on his tables and between his palms. Yamaguchi would have never, ever guessed.

“Tsukki,” he asks suddenly. “Have I changed?”

Tsukishima turns to him. He studies him for a few moments, Yamaguchi searing under his gaze.

“A little,” Tsukishima answers.

“How?”

“I’m not really sure yet. I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine,” Yamaguchi agrees, “but don’t forget.”

“I won’t. Yamaguchi?”

“What?”

Tsukishima’s stare sticks to the carpet beneath their feet. The pale sunrise creeps through the window curtains, swallowing most of the lamplight in the room. Yamaguchi stifles a yawn.

“Oikawa is your best friend, right?”

He furrows his brow. “Yeah. Why?”

“I was just thinking about something.” Tsukishima glances over at the mug on the end table, scooting it gently away from the edge and toward the center. He clasps his hands in his lap. “Do you remember a few weeks back in the library basement, when he came to get his laptop from you?”

Yamaguchi squints, lost. “Sure. What about it?”

“I watched you two, how close you stood and how you talked, how easy it was,” Tsukishima tells the carpet. “It reminded me of you and I before I left.”

Yamaguchi turns, but Tsukishima won’t look back at him. His features and voice are soft. The cadence of it flows through the room like a breeze. Yamaguchi’s heart climbs into his throat, a flash of red frustration darting out from its hiding place just long enough to snap before it slinks away again.

“It’s not _my_ fault that changed, Tsukki.”

Finally, Tsukishima turns to him. His gaze shimmers golden beneath his glasses.

“I know.”

The weight of his stare holds Yamaguchi down, the mattress creaking slightly under its gravity. It creaks again as Tsukishima reaches behind him to rest his hand on Yamaguchi’s opposite shoulder. Yamaguchi lets out a long breath. Tsukishima’s palm is snug and heavy on him, comfortable, welcome and intoxicating. Yamaguchi could doze off if he didn’t feel so absolutely electrified.

“Tsukki,” he murmurs.

Tsukishima shifts. He tips his head onto Yamaguchi’s shoulder and stays there, his cheek warm through the layers of fabric that separate their skin. The sunrise peeks through the curtains as if to watch them. Faint morning light dances on the opposite wall and Yamaguchi lets out another deep breath he didn’t realize he’d held. His heart knocks steadily in his chest. Yamaguchi concentrates, afraid one beat too fast or too slow will prompt Tsukishima to shift away. This new part of Tsukishima has Yamaguchi reeling, falling, gasping, wondering if time has changed any of his own parts too much at all. Tsukishima’s whisper cracks the thick silence in half.

“You know,” he mutters, voice soft like a spring drizzle, “you’re still my best friend.”

Yamaguchi’s hand finds Tsukishima’s knee. He grips it gently, just enough to let him know he’d heard. If Yamaguchi’s parts have changed, it’s only scarcely. All of his parts have been dropped through a shredder and stitched back together with glinting, golden threads, his friends holding the needles.

But all of Yamaguchi’s parts, old and new, still want Tsukishima.


End file.
